RADIO TELEVISION & FILM LLC

Jesse Redniss, Senior Vice President of Digital, USA Network

2012-02-13T11:57:00.001-08:00

Jesse Redniss, Senior Vice President of Digital, USA Network, about the network's plans to build online user engagement and second-screen components around the 136th annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, which airs tonight and tomorrow. In the Q&A, Mr. Redniss also discussed how USA Network has valued digital content and Social TV in the past and what it sees for the trend in the future.

In your opinion, what is the value of offering viewers content across multiple platforms? Ubiquitous access across multiple platforms for viewer and user consumption helps shape the overall digital experience with our original content - moving it from the traditional "sit back" to a more active and lean forward environment. With multiple layers of social and content engagement opportunities the network gains an enhanced connection with fans and extends the brand experience. Additionally, our brand partners benefit from a more organic connection to our loyal fan base.

How is USA Network using additional platforms to boost coverage around this upcoming Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show? This year we have expanded our Social TV initiatives with our first live video coverage during the day and social viewing experiences including community chatting, interviews, Facebook and Twitter integrations and real-time behind the scenes moments from the floor. We are partnering with UStream for the video coverage, which will be accessible worldwide via online and mobile phones. Subaru of America is sponsoring a special Character Chatter with expert Chuck Bessant on Tuesday, February 13 at 10pm ET.

What makes the WKC a great program to show how online engagements can impact TV viewership? WKC presents a unique opportunity to track this activity back to viewership because of its very specific niche target demographic. While there isn't an industry standard yet that tracks digital activity to viewership in a standardized manner, USA Network is working to closely monitor, track and standardize this connection.

How has the network used Social TV/second-screen/social gaming components in the past to build viewer engagement? USA Network has worked with industry-leading partners to use cutting-edge technologies, such as check in services like GetGlue and Echo to build new ways for fans to interact with show producers, talent and community. It's something that's allowed USA to gain valuable insight into future programming, audience interest and loyalty. We also launched CLUB PSYCH in 2010, which quickly became one of the most talked about successful examples of gamification in our industry, due to our rabid fan base and their excitement about being rewarded for online activity.

Looking toward the future: What do you see on the horizon for Social TV, and what role does USA Network want to play as part of that trend? With each of our digital executions, USA Network is lending its hand in shaping the overall definition of Social TV. We work closely with our show producers, writers and talent to ensure the multiplatform executions act as storytelling extensions and seamless experiences for the fans. This is the make or break inflection point for a network in Social TV. We see this trend continuing and possibly having Social TV influence what we see in original programming, as consumers share their likes and dislikes.

Carol Greenwald, Senior Executive Producer of Children's Programming at WGBH.

2012-02-13T11:55:00.001-08:00

Carol Greenwald, Senior Executive Producer of Children's Programming at WGBH. Greenwald is co-creator and executive producer for the first eight seasons of hugely popular PBS series Arthur. She also served as executive producer of Postcards from Buster also a PBS series, and Time Warp Trio, which ran on the Saturday morning Discovery Kids block on NBC. Greenwald partnered with Universal to launch Curious George, based on H. A. and Margret Rey's classic books. Greenwald is the executive producer of Martha Speaks, based on Susan Meddaugh's book series. Greenwald also helped to develop kid-targeted programs including Between the Lions and Peep and the Big Wide World. She was one of the original creators of Long Ago & Far Away, and additionally held several other roles on that series, including project director, series editor and producer. Prior to her tenure at WGBH, Greenwald was a freelance producer on radio projects, documentary films, and multimedia efforts.

You have helped bring many popular books to television. What is the most exciting and/or challenging part of adapting an already popular or beloved property and character to another format?
The initial development process on these projects is just about the most fun we get to have. On the television side, we have had the opportunity to work with terrific writers and artists who really understand how to stay true to the vision of the original books but at the same time expand the world so that it is comprehensive enough to build it into a media property.

When we do have the opportunity to collaborate with the authors and illustrators (like Marc Brown and Susan Meddaugh), the creative sparks fly. Susan insisted, for example, that Martha had to always, always act and think like a dog and never cross the line into human behavior. That was a great guideline to start with.

In the case of Curious George, we had to dig deeply into the books for clues about how to create his world. Joe Fallon, who was the head writer for the first several seasons of that series, scrutinized every page of the original books. He noticed, for example, that the Reys (Hans and Margret, the author/Illustrators of those books) clearly had a fondness for dachshunds because there was one who kept showing up in the illustrations as a background character. That inspired him to create the character of Hundley, who has become one of my favorite characters.

One of the missions of Martha Speaks is to help kids develop their vocabulary. What comes first, creating a storyline and then selecting a word within the arc of that episode to support that theme, or the other way around? Is there a full curriculum built around each episode?
The goal of Martha Speaks is to support the development of oral vocabulary for kids. So it's not about decoding, or phonics, but about making sure kids get introduced to the words they need to know to succeed and become literate.

Educational research is pretty definitive that there is a strong correlation between kids who enter school with a good stock of vocabulary and their success in school, all the way up through high school. And that makes sense because as you transition from learning to read to reading to learn, even if you have the best phonics and decoding skills in the world, you're going to have problems if you keep bumping into words that you have never heard. So Martha Speaks is chock full of vocabulary, and we aren't afraid to include words that are challenging because we know kids actually really love to have those kinds of words roll off their tongues!

As to what comes first the words or the story -- it goes both ways. In some cases, writers will pitch us a story and then we will work with our advisor, Dr. Rebecca Silverman, to come up with a group of vocabulary words that works within the story. But we've also done it the other way Rebecca will tell us that kids really need more support on directional words or science words and we'll go back to the writers and ask them to dream up a fun story that incorporates those words.

Jon Hamm and Jennifer Westfeldt will appear with their dog Cora in the season four premiere of Martha Speaks on February 20. How did this episode come about and what was it like working with them?
Ken Scarborough, head writer for Martha Speaks (who also had that role on Arthur and is currently on Curious George) and his wife, Raye Lankford (who also writes for all three shows) were on an elevator with their dog, Ruby, in New York and bumped into Jon Hamm and Jennifer Westfeldt. Jennifer started petting Ruby and mentioned how much she was missing Cora who lives on the West Coast. Raye and Ken immediately realized that this was the basis of a great Martha story and suggested that we could make Cora a guest star on Martha. They reported the conversation to us and we jumped on it. And when they said yes, we were thrilled.

It has been reported that Marc Brown, who wrote the Arthur books, was originally reluctant to turn his eight-year-old aardvark into a TV character. What changed his mind?
I know that Marc had already turned down many very attractive offers to turn Arthur into a TV series when I first approached him in 1994. But I think what resonated with him was the idea that we could use Arthur as a vehicle to motivate kids to read. Some new research had just come out from Action for Children's Television which showed that kids were more likely to read books if they saw them adapted into a TV show. And that once they connected to reading the books they saw on TV, there was a real opportunity to get them to continue reading. So we took our cue from that research and, with Marc's enthusiastic support, designed Arthur as a series that would motivate reading. In fact, at the time, Arthur had no last name and we decided that we might as well just be right out there and call him Arthur Read.

Arthur lives in Elwood City, home of the Elwood City Grebes baseball franchise. How is the team doing?
Sadly, the Grebes still haven't been able to get a winning season going. But, as we in Boston know only too well, there's always next year!

You've been developing shows for more than two decades. How has digital media changed the way you approach a project.
In 1997, a guy named Howard Cutler, who was one of the people at WGBH thinking about what this new technology meant for public media, told me that we should get ahead of the curve and develop a web site for Arthur. Frankly, I was pretty skeptical but when we rolled out our first, very simple prototype several months later and started getting about 1000 emails a week, I realized he was right.

Now, of course, we look at everything we do across every possible platform. Our Martha Speaks app (Martha Speaks Dog Party) has been incredibly effective at teaching kids vocabulary and Arthur's Facebook page has nearly 825,000 fans. We view ourselves as content providers, and our goal is to be able to deliver this content to kids wherever they might be and to figure out how we can best take advantage of all of the affordances each platform offers.

You also have the premiere of two new episodes of Postcards from Buster airing February 18 and 25. Where is Buster traveling and how can families learn about these countries?
Buster travels to Chennai, in India and to Santiago and its environs in Chile. Of course these two places couldn't be more different, which is part of what makes these two programs so great. In India, Buster learns a lot about how important extended family is to the culture. In Chile, he's impressed by the adventurous spirits of the kids he meets.

What was your favorite book when you were growing up? Do the characters from that book (or series) still live in your head as you create your projects?
My mother was an English teacher, so I caught the reading bug early on and spent a lot of time (probably too much!) reading things like The Little House books, Nancy Drew, and theChronicles of Narnia, to name a few. But where my mother really influenced me was to encourage me to start reading the classics at a very young age, from Greek myths to Dickens, from The Call of the Wild to Jane Eyre. Those books have staying power I still go back and re-read them now. What I think all that reading did for me was teach me what makes a good story, and that is probably the thing that's most important to me as I work on these shows.

Can you tell us about what is new on your current development slate?
Without getting too specific, there are two projects I'm very excited about. I'm developing a new book based project which, of course, is something I love to do, and I've also been working on another project in collaboration with Angela Santamero from Out of the Blue. It's been great fun for me to be able to learn from her unique approach to getting kids to interact with their TV sets!

There are those in Congress who continually target cutting funds to public TV and radio stations and programs provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. What do you say to lawmakers who advocate those cuts?
The small amount of money that the federal government invests in public broadcasting creates amazing resources for all kids. The programming is free, easily accessible and proven to help children learn. There's plenty of research to support this, for example the research we did on Martha Speaks (http://pressroom.wgbh.org/assets/txt/mart_MSEvalRel_2552.pdf) that demonstrated how the show and the iPhone app, as I mentioned above, had a significant impact on increasing vocabulary for kids who watched the show and played with the app.

Josh Selig, Founder Little Airplane Productions

2012-02-06T12:27:00.001-08:00

Josh Selig, Founder and President of the 13-year-old Little Airplane Productions (www.littleairplane.com). Selig also creator and executive producer of preschool series including The Wonder Pets!, Oobi!, and Go, Baby!, Small Potatoes and 3rd & Bird, among others including a brand series we discuss below, and has directed countless short films. Selig also toiled as a writer on Sesame Street and the head writer on the animated series Little Bill, as well as serving as the Resident Producer in Jerusalem on the notable Israeli-Palestinian production of Sesame Street. If you happen to be in NYC, or live nearby, you should definitely make a visit to Little Airplane Productions' home in a more than 200-year-old building located in New York City's South Street Seaport.

We understand you are creating a new preschool TV series with singer/songwriter Laurie Berkner called Sing It, Laurie! How did you meet Laurie and what will you be doing together?
Laurie and I have been friends for years and we've always talked about making a show together. We have a very similar sensibility when it comes to preschoolers. Sing It, Laurie! is an animated preschool series about a little girl who loves to sing and play music. She has a little dog named Jam and they fly around her neighborhood in her super cute vehicle called a Wing Dinger. The show will feature many of Laurie's biggest hits, as well as great new songs written by Laurie. The whole show is simply adorable.

Are there any TV, or other deals, for Sing It, Laurie! in place here in the US or elsewhere?
Laurie and I will be sharing the series for the first time this month with broadcasters, publishers, toy people and licensing folks at both KidScreen and Toy Fair. We expect that Sing It, Laurie! will appeal to both the domestic and international markets so we'll be taking the show to MIP TV as well. We see this as a global brand.

Your work has appeared on Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, PBS, and CBeebies and on other channels around the world, what is the biggest challenge in entertaining preschoolers and what draws you so much to reaching this age group?
I make shows for preschoolers because I honestly believe that human beings peak at age four. At age four, we have our priorities straight: Family, friends, play and artwork. The biggest challenge in entertaining preschoolers is that many of the commissioners aren't as creative as the children they buy shows for.

Your shows like Wonder Pets, Small Potatoes and 3rd & Bird have remarkable kids' voices. How do you cast those kids and how do you get them to perform so naturally and with such enthusiasm? And by the way you continually work with kids and animals going against the famous W.C. Fields adage, "Never work with animals or children."
We typically audition about 100 children for every child that we cast in a lead role. We always audition both professionals and non-professionals. Once we've found the right kid for a part, we just let them be themselves. I find that most children are naturally brilliant and funny. They only sound unnatural when they're told to act like someone else. By the way, I've heard that animals and children didn't like working with W.C. Fields either.

Speaking of Small Potatoes... Little Airplane has just wrapped production on the Small Potatoes animated musical film, Meet the Small Potatoes. Can you tell us about the movie and how it's the same and/or different from what we know on the TV series? Do you have a movie distribution deal in place?
Meet The Small Potatoes is an animated rock mockumentary in the spirit of This Is Spinal Tap. The film stars Malcolm McDowell as the band's manager and features new songs by the legendary Broadway composer, the late Jerry Bock (Fiddler on the Roof). Our Facebook page just passed the half million fan mark, and we've taken the bold step of casting 1,000 of our Facebook fans' potato avatars in the film. Meet The Small Potatoes was made for the whole family--not just preschoolers--and we're currently in talks with one of the larger international distributors.

Is there a licensing program underway for Small Potatoes or specifically the movie?
Absolutely. Aardman Rights is now managing all the rights for Small Potatoes in the UK & EMEA and they expect to announce our master toy partner shortly. In addition to our existing deals with Penguin (publishing), and iTunes (music), Little Airplane will be announcing several new deals at Toy Fair including games, apps and digital books.

Your programs also feature infectious songs by noted composers and lyricists. Are you a would-be Broadway producer?
Never. I hear that Broadway is even harder than kids' TV. But we do take our music seriously at Little Airplane and we're proud to have been honored with several Emmys_® in this area. For us, the script is the narrative body of a show but the music is its heartbeat.

So for shows like Wonder Pets and 3rd & Bird how much time does the production team spend photographing real baby animals.
We've actually photographed many live animals over the years at Little Airplane. We rescued the original Ming-Ming Duckling from a Fois Gras farm in upstate New York and, after we photographed her, we gave her to an animal rescue center who released her into Central Park. We're told Ming-Ming lives there still. Seriously.

Do you have any plans to create content for older kids, tweens and teens?
Last year I helped launch Toronto's Little Tugboat Productions with my dear friend Brenda Nietupski. Brenda knows the older kids' TV space better than I do, so we've decided to include both a preschool show and a tween show on our upcoming Tugboat development slate for 2012.

You were on Sesame Street as a child. Did you ever get in trouble on the set?
Hmm. I do seem to recall a shoplifting incident at Hooper's Store involving a Rubber Ducky.

Martin Baynton, a creator/writer/narrator/executive producer

2012-01-30T11:29:00.001-08:00

Answering a few of our questions today is Martin Baynton, a creator/writer/narrator/executive producer as well as co-founder, with Richard Taylor of Weta Workshop (www.wetanz.com), of Pukeko Pictures, an intellectual property development company. Baynton, who has written and illustrated 30+ kids' books, most recently co-created, with Taylor, the preschool TV series the WotWots (www.wotwots.com/americas/home), and is the series editor and executive producer, as well as the voice of the show's narrator SpottyWot. Baynton and Taylor adapted his classic book series Jane And The Dragon (1986) into a TV series that has aired around the world. Baynton has done a myriad of things, including studying painting, yoga and Electrophysiological technology, worked in a biofeedback unit at a hospital, and he has served as a roadie, a scene painter, a relief House Parent to young teens under house arrest for petty crimes, and as a literacy motivator seriously he's done all this and more. Born and raised in England, Baynton now lives in New Zealand with his family.

As co-creator, series editor and executive producer of The WotWots, can you tell us something about the planet SpottyWot and DottyWot come from? Does the planet have anything in common with life in New Zealand?
All WotWots explore life around the universe to seek out attributes they want to embrace. So when the return to their world they 'grow up' into Chimera, which depict their unique points of difference. The WotWots encourage diversity and they respect and embrace differences. So on their home planet no two WotWots look alike, they have different colours, furs, tails, horns etc and they fill every niche of ecological life on their planet. There are no other life forms there, every living creature is a WotWot and they are all sentient. Hence they only eat vegetables and fruit, no farming fishing or hunting like in New Zealand.

How did watching the behavior of your own kids lead to the creation of the WotWots? What did you hope to capture?
My wife Diane homeschooled them for a few years. She never did formal lessons with them, she just used their thirst of knowledge and their desire to have adventures as platforms for learning. So everyday was an expedition into the unknown. The kids loved it, and I hope the WotWots display that same thirst for learning.

You are the writer and illustrator of more than 30 kid's books, including the beloved Jane and The Dragon. She's in training to become a knight--in 9th century England--and her friend is a 300-year-old fire-breather who happens to talk. Why was it so important for you to create this courageous 12-year-old girl?
Back in the 1986 when I wrote Jane there were still attitudes and expectations about what girls should do. So Jane was a modern fable that turned old fairy tales on their heads. Girls were rewarded for good behavior, for cleaning up after stepmothers and dwarfs, and they were rewarded by meeting a handsome prince who would marry them, as if that was a good thing. So setting a defiant girl into that medieval male dominated setting was a way of throwing those attitudes into high relief.

Why does Jane utter the word "Maggots!" now and then?
I hate kids using swear words, it's ugly and demeaning to them. So I encouraged my own kids to create their own fruity and unique oaths that would def' express their feelings but were more earthy than rude. So I did the same for Jane, I created a lexicon of colloquial expressions that felt like swearwords but were perfectly literary and respectable. So her favorites were 'Maggots' and 'Puss and Pestilence!' Full of attitude but perfectly safe to broadcast.

When one of your books becomes an animated character, what concerns you the most? Are you protective of the original concept, or do you just let your characters grow in a different medium?
It's a matter of trust, of building a great team around a show and evolving ownership from myself to the group in a slow and practical way so that every member of the team knows the DNA of the characters as if they were family. Having said that I have always been the exec producer and lead creative so all the final creative decisions sit with me.

You worked as an auxiliary nurse, caring for terminally ill patients. Are there lessons from that experience that inform your books for young people?
Only that life should be lived as a celebration of all things wonderful. I don't have time to engage with the negative, I don't enjoy creative arts that press easy buttons of despair or anger, I only write books that seek to harness the uplifting aspects of life.

You once spent six weekends walking a dog with actress Ava Gardner, in preparation for a book. Was that your "Week with Marilyn" experience?
Yes, it was the late 70s and I was in my twenties, unpublished. She was wonderful, full of stories about her amazing life. I would meet her in her apartment in Kensington and we would walk her corgi dog 'Morgan' round Hyde Park. I was hired to ghost write her story idea and to illustrate it. In the end the publisher passed on her book but hired me as an illustrator on other books.

Would you reveal the next character you are about to give birth to?
Yes. Right now I'm writing a children's book that is an allegory for walking away from bullying and other forms of violence, be it domestic or playground. I can't tell you more or I would have to kill you, which would be a poor start to the marketing campaign for this book.

Susanna Pollack, VP/Global Sales and Marketing, SocialSamba

2012-01-23T15:46:00.001-08:00

Susanna Pollack, VP/Global Sales and Marketing, SocialSamba (www.socialsamba.com). Pollack has been in the media distribution business for 15+ years, working with both international entertainment companies and media startups. Pollack previously toiled for BBC Worldwide as SVP, CBeebies Channel Development, US, and prior to that as BBC Worldwide Americas as Director/Co-Productions and Sales. She was previously SVP/Global Television and Licensing, Star Farm Productions. Before joining SocialSamba, Pollack served as a consultant for locally produced TED events, TEDxEast, Massiverse; and Sandbox Summit. Look for SocialSamba this week at NATPE.

Can you tell us a bit about SocialSamba and how it works?
SocialSamba is a platform for scripted social networking which means we enable fans to "friend" the characters they love from TV, movies, books, and brands, and experience what it's like to be part of a social network with those characters. It's the same way you experience the lives of friends and family using Facebook, only the content from the characters is created by professional writers so it tells a great story. We license our platform to the professional storytellers to create these stories, we have current productions live from the TV shows Covert Affairs and Psych from USA Networks, and the movie Dolphin Tale and Joyful Noise from Warner Bros.

The difference between our platform and the legacy models of storytelling through social media is that we enable these storytellers to script the posts, comments, images and videos once, and then we play them back for each fan whenever they want it. In other models, the social storytelling experience is reliant on storytellers to push out posts/dialogue in real time as well as having fans be available when the stories are released (not to mention being able to sift through the deluge of tweets and posts being put up by all of their friends.) Our system ensures that the stories are not lost in today's massive social fire hoses, because the fans can experience whenever they want. The stories actually become assets that are accessed on the fan's time.

This sort of social networking seems like a natural idea for kids and tweens, who want nothing more than to get closer to their favorite shows/movies, characters, singers and idols. Have you created or are you currently working on any projects specifically targeted to kids and/or Tweens?
We did not originally design this platform to reach the kids market. However, because it is a closed social network, it is COPPA compliant. The user is the only real person in the story. This unintended feature has allowed the door to be open to the under 13 demo. That and the opportunity for kids to be able to friend their favorite characters and actually become part of a story is irresistible.

Because of this feature, many kids and tween brands have shown interest in us building experiences for their fans. The other beauty of the SocialSamba platform is that it can live anywhere. We consider ourselves platform agnostic. We just want to go to where the fans are, whether they are on Facebook, Twitter or your website site. We can create an app that can live on any or all of these places.

We are currently in deep conversations with several brands and networks to bring a scripted social experience to kids, tweens and teens. You can expect an announcement very soon.

What are the biggest challenges when creating a scripted social networking program for kids/tweens?
I guess I would have to say it's the same challenge any storyteller has creating characters and stories that keep kids engaged and wanting to come back. The characters development and storytelling we leave up to the experts (remember, we are a technology company first and foremost). But we do offer some advantages that make the connection between character and fan more immediate and deeper. First and foremost, in the scripted social experience, the fan becomes a participant in the story, is called by name, and is empowered to direct the story.

We also help design the overall experience using a good deal of gamification strategies to motivate fans to come back and check out the next 'scene' or episode. We use points systems to rewards fans to return to the story, we have characters send emails and DM's to fans to remind them that there are new posts waiting, we even offer exclusive footage for those fans who can solve mysteries or trivia games.

So, in the scripted story does every user get the same information experience? Is new material added daily or weekly or all launched at once?
Remember that with the SocialSamba platform, all the scripting is done in advance. We work with the storytellers to shape an experience that allows the fan to have direct impact on how the story unfolds. Using a natural language processer, we can take key moments in a story, ask the fans to comment and use their response to direct where the story goes. That way, each fan can have a different experience from their friends.

The length of our stories depends on the story and the consumer. For some stories (and fans), the appropriate length for an experience may be a single sitting for 20 minutes. Perhaps the experience is something that can be repeated several times and each time the user has a different outcome.

For other stories, take USA Network's Psych for example - the story they created, called #hashtagkiller, existed over 7 week long episodes. Each week consisted of 5 days of content, which was posted every week. So that was a very involved story, broken down into week long chunks which allowed the fan to enjoy the story, take a break if desired and then return when the new content was posted. All episodes remained up so the fan can drop in when he/she desired.

What happens when users reach the end of the script? Can they start from the beginning again and make different choices?
Absolutely. It's like a 'choose your adventure' book that you might have read when you were a child. How exciting is it to see what happens if you took door number 2 instead of door number 1?

How does the big SocialSamba machine know what a participant is looking for? Is the program triggered by key words or choices?
As part of the proprietary SocialSamba technology, we use a natural language processer that looks for key words as well as sentiments that help direct how the story unfolds. The difference is that we are not prompting simple yes/no questions. We are encouraging conversation and it's through this natural exchange that we can pick up responses that impact where the story goes.

We also have a system whereby we can interpret the kind of social media user the fan is. We all know there are people out there who feel compelled to check their Facebook page 20 times a day (no comment) but also those who look maybe 2 times a week. We can structure and time the pacing of our stories to ensure that we meet the appetite of that voracious fan while not overwhelming the more casual fan.

Do kids and adults interact with the platform differently?
I think the interaction with character and story is the same regardless of age. The difference is really where you are experiencing the story. If the targeted demo for the story is over 13, and the app lives on Facebook, we will create features that will encourage making the experience more public and viral. For example, although the scripted social network is private (meaning none of the posts appear on your public Facebook page) we do allow opportunities for the fan to select pre-scripted posts/videos and post to their wall, which is designed, of course, to draw friends into the experience. We also offer rewards to users to invite friends to join the app using a 'friends meter'.

Are there educational opportunities that SocialSamba is looking to tap into? Can you tell us about them?
I think this a scripted social experience has tremendous potential in the educational space. As educators are seeking digital experiences to engage children in and out of the school a scripted social experience offers a child a portal into the world of amazing historical figures on a platform that is familiar and fun! Imagine being invited to 'friend' America's founding fathers, or Shakespeare or Albert Einstein or Genghis Kahn. Obviously with a little suspension of belief, a child can become a player in some of the most important events of our world.

We haven't focused on the education sector yet, but I would certainly welcome a discussion!

What's your favorite story from childhood that you can still hear over and over again?
I was always a fan of Grimm's Fairytales and believe me there were many times I wish I could have helped direct the outcome of those stories. If only Hansel and Gretel didn't wander into the house... or the miller's daughter didn't listen to Rumpelstiltskin! If I had the opportunity to join these characters in the story, I can't say the endings would have changed (that's up the storytellers of course) but I would have loved being part of the action.

Brian Fitzgerald, Co-founder of Evolve Media Corp

2012-01-09T07:49:00.001-08:00

Brian Fitzgerald, Co-founder of Evolve Media Corp, a provider of online advertising solutions, creative agencies and video platforms. Evolve is the parent company of four business units, Gorilla Nation Media, AtomicOnline, Double Helix and SpringBoard Video. Fitzgerald was a Co-founder and developer of all of these franchises. Today our questions will focus specifically on Youthology Media (www.youthologymedia.com), a subsidiary of Gorilla Nation Media that provides kid, tween and teen targeted digital marketing programs. Until last year, Youthology Media was formerly known as Gorilla Nation Kids and Teens (GNKids and Teens). Youthology's services include digital content development, branded entertainment, targeting, and brand studies, as well as video production and distribution for clients in the entertainment, consumer goods, food and beverage, retail, and telecommunications industries. It also provides targeted brand campaigns, show cases for brands, and online advertisement sales, as well as sells advertisements to advertisers and agencies internationally. Prior to co-founding Gorilla Nation in 2001, Fitzgerald was an Intellectual Property attorney. He lives in LA with his wife and kids.

Gorilla Nation had been involved in the kid and teen world for some time, what happened or changed to make you decide that you needed a specific company, Youthology, specifically for the youth market? Was it one area that drove the decision specifically kids, tweens or teens?GNKids and Teens was the starting point for us in the youth world and we were hugely successful. The deeper we got into this vertical we discovered brands really wanting to reach tweens specifically. Therefore we added more tween specific sites to our offering in order cater to this growing demand. The Youthology vertical encompasses kids, teens and tweens allowing us to present brands with a more specific audience, with ad products and media programs custom tailored to engage said audience.

What is the main difference between the way adults and kids, tweens and teens use digital media?There are some parallels between digital use of adults and youth in the fact they are on the web for 3 things- research information, entertainment and to socialize. The difference is in the content. Tweens and Teens are researching information they might need for school projects as well as info about music, movies, sports, and video games. Adults tend to search for information about how-to's, travel, local events, etc. When it comes to entertainment, games are HUGE for kids, teens, tweens and this really spans all ages of youths. We have found one of the best ways for a brand to engage with youth is through a branded game. Adults enjoy entertainment through games as well but also watch videos and visit humorous sites.

And specifically social media?I think it goes without saying that the main source of social media for adults is Facebook and Twitter. Given the age minimum for Facebook is 13, younger youth are not even able to participate. Youth tend to socialize on sites surrounding content where they share common interests and are able strike up conversations about those topics. We have been very impressed and somewhat surprised about how mature and well spoken some of the youth are on our social sites. We often see them talking about politics and world affairs. They are very in tune with current events and quite vocal about them on our message boards. Recognizing that market opportunity, our publishing division AtomicOnline purchased TeenSpot.com, one of the Web's largest teen community sites, allowing Youthology to offer to marketers media programs that are far more integrated than what we customarily can execute reliably on sites that are merely affiliates.

Have the current economic challenges changed how you are partnering and developing new relationships in marketing, branded entertainment and custom video production and distribution?Over the last 2 years we have been diligent in delivering branded entertainment and other highly custom executions at constantly improving price points. At the same time we have ensured that our represented sites are able to seamlessly and effortless integrate these custom elements. These dual focuses provide advertisers with price effective high impact scalable executions and our publishers access to advertising dollars previously out of their reach.

Do you think that kids, tweens and teens are as fickle, unpredictable, unreliable, etc., as industry folks like to think they are or is that just an excuse?I wouldn't say they're fickle; they just know what they like and what they don't like. Through our community of youth websites we've noticed that if something doesn't grab kids' attention immediately, they'll move on without hesitation, it's easy to do since so much is being thrown at them. So for us, it's important to capture their interest as soon as they click onto our sites it's how we keep our readers coming back.

How hard is it to keep up with kids, tweens and teens or a step ahead of them to make sure you can reach them the way you need to reach them?This question kind of goes hand and hand with the previous question. Youth are very busy on the web surfing around different sites and if they are not entertained or engaged they will leave. We find it very important to listen to the kids, teens and tweens on what they are discussing on the sites, what games they are playing, and what articles they are most interested in reading. This gives us knowledge to relay to brands and helps us create campaigns that are impactful and will resonate with the youth. It's not about staying ahead as much as it keeping a pulse on youth.

Is everybody at Youthology really young?Our employees reflect the Youthology brand and range from 2-17 years old. Just kidding! Youthology employs a staff that ranges in age from early 20s to 40s. However, we do actually work with sites that were started by youth. Either way, working in the youth market keeps everyone very young at heart.

What have you learned from your own kids and their friends that has influenced how you or your clients are reaching their target audiences?I've learned that if kids find something engaging, then they will really immerse themselves with it and spend a ton of time interacting with it (a toy, a game, an activity, etc.). The flipside of that is that, it is often very difficult to predict what they will find engaging. When I look at some of the toys, games or other things that capture my kids attention, I am baffled. If someone told me that Puffles, a part of Club Penguin, would be so huge, I would have laughed. How wrong I was.

What are the educational applications of what Youthology does and is there anything new on that front?We do have a number of educational sites and education/college based social networks that offer free notes, outlines, vocabulary terms, study guides, practice exams, as well as college only social nets. We are not currently seeking out any additional educational sites but I do think we will work in more educational integrations and campaigns in 2012.

What new youth project are you most excited about?One of the things that I am really excited about is SPIL's Social Gaming. In a social game a user will be able to earn virtual currency in exchange for interacting with an advertisement. This allows players to connect with, and share a brand's message within their gaming environment, where they are already the most engaged. SPIL is one of the largest gaming sites in the world with a localized global network of sites in 19 languages. Currently they reach over 140 million unique users worldwide per month.

I understand you are an electric mountain biker. How did you get involved with the sport and is it a competitive sport?It's not exactly competitive. I've always loved the feeling of speeding down the side of a mountain or navigating a rocky creek bed, but as time cranked on, climbing up that mountain got harder and more and more treacherous! So I found a way to manipulate that a bit to my advantage. Now I can peddle downhill for as fast as my heart desires! I've found away to please the 22-year-old guy inside of me without putting to much wear and tear on my 42 year old body.

Disney-ABC Testing New Production Strategies for Companion Web Programming for ABC, Disney, ABC Family Shows

2011-12-21T13:32:00.000-08:00

by Daisy Whitney

Friday, December 2, 2011 9:13 AM

Disney-ABC Television Group has been expanding its work in original video programming to now include companion content for ABC Family and Disney Channel shows in addition to ABC primetime programs.

The company’s digital media studios group has also been experimenting with new production processes for online video in support of an upcoming ABC Family pilot in 2012. If successful, the new process could become a blueprint for how the development of complementary online video content can be integrated into the production of a show.

To date, the digital media studios group has been tasked with producing behind-the-scenes material, interviews, and derivative Web programming for ABC shows such as “Lost” and “Cougartown,” and recently began supporting the other networks, said Chris Thomes, VP digital media studios at Disney-ABC TV Group.

Currently, his team is developing complementary Web programming for an ABC Family pilot slated for a 2012 release. The work could serve as a proving ground for best practices for Web production. “We want to get in early, work with the show runner and the production company and make sure we have a digital strategy for that show so we’re not playing catch up,” he said.

Starting earlier can also help the digital media studios group better support marketing and sales, he said. “What it can do is show to our sales department that we can create entertainment that is interesting for the brands, show to marketing that it can do some of the lifting they need, and it can extend our stories earlier in the process whereby everybody can get behind it and it can be woven into the fabric of a show’s production. We can be proactive.”

Thomes said the sales team sells inventory in original online video year-round, but will also be making a concerted push to include integrated packages with online video programming in the upfront.

Answering a few of our questions this week is Nate Ball

2011-12-19T10:42:00.001-08:00

Answering a few of our questions this week is Nate Ball, TV host, inventor, entrepreneur, athlete, and musician and an engineer. In addition to hosting the PBS series Design Squad from by WGBH, which he continues to be involved with, Ball is actively involved with a range of youth-targeted programs including National Engineers Week Foundation and Future City Competition, which are designed to get kids/tweens/teens interested in the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) disciplines and choosing a career in those fields. Ball, who I might add is only in his late 20s, began building things as a young kid, holds two degrees in mechanical engineering from MIT, and has worked on a number of breakthrough scientific efforts, including a needle-free vaccine delivery device, as well as co-founding a company, Atlas Devices, and co-inventing a powered rope ascender (think Batman), among other inventions. Ball's other interests include beatboxing, jazz piano, and parkour; oh and he's a pole-vaulter too. Raise your hand if you think you would have been a much better science/math student had he been around to get us jazzed about the subject when you were a kid. Yeah, me too though I doubt I would have been a better pole-vaulter.

When and why did you get interested in combining your expertise in engineering with getting kids/tweens/teens interested in the field and learning to create and problem solve?
I've always found myself really excited to share things I love with other people. It started young, like when I was four years old and would immediately greet guests at our house with "want to see me breakdance?!" And engineering is at the top of my list to help get others excited about - kids and adults alike, in fact. I began to get really passionate about sharing my love of engineering at the beginning of my involvement with Design Squad in 2003, when I was sophomore in mechanical engineering. It was the same time I realized that I could do what I loved most - building cool stuff - as a profession! And that's what I wanted to share. Creating and problem solving for me are a way of life, and that's what makes engineering as a career feel like play. When you help younger students make that connection too, you're hooked.

How did you get involved with WGBH and Design Squad?
When I was a sophomore at MIT in 2003, WGBH came to a design class of mine, asking if my section could help brainstorm ideas for what would be cool to do on a kid's TV show about engineering. I had grown up building a lot of projects like kayaks, hovercraft, catapults, and even a Tesla coil, and my ideas resonated with their mission to show what exciting and practical places STEM education can lead to.

Can you describe how the Design Squad series works?
It's included a few iterations now, but my favorite was the raw, fast-paced reality show format. Each week two teams of teenagers received an engineering challenge from a client, and they had to build a real, functional solution in only two days! We had everything from machines that rapidly cooked and flipped pancakes at the touch of a button to soccer ball launching machines that were tested on the field with a real MLS team. At the end, the winning contestant got a $10,000 scholarship.

Can you tell us about the content you are working for the show's website and when it will roll out?
I'm pretty excited about the videos I'm helping to create. My part of the new website content will be short videos that feature really cool little engineering tidbits, tips, and mini-projects. What I love highlighting in this format is how empowering an engineering education can be. You just think about the world differently, and I want to show what exciting things you can build, think about, and solve problems around just with some basic concepts from where the STEM education hits the road.

In addition to Design Squad you are very involved in The National Engineers Week and its Future City Competition. What is the best way to encourage kids/tweens/teens to get interested and excited about engineering?
I think it's by helping facilitate experiences for them that exemplify what engineering is all about. Putting them in teams where they get to use their own skills and knowledge to solve problems that they care about is about the best thing I can imagine! When you begin to see how your own skills and understanding enable you to become a capable problem solver, you begin to imagine entirely new ways you can have an effect on the world around you, and that's extremely empowering and self-reinforcing.

Tell us about the Future City Competition and why you are involved.
The Future City Competition does all the things I just mentioned that build students' interest in engineering, and they do it so well in a competitive format. When you get all these high energy creative kids together, sharing ideas and seeing each other's teamwork, it's a great event. And I'm so impressed with the breadth of challenges they have to face in the designs of their cities of the future. It's a real full-package design problem.

Do you ever talk to students about what your interest in beatboxing, parkour and jazz?
Yes, I absolutely talk about my interests with kids, including the beatboxing, parkour, and jazz, and even pole vaulting. All of these things include aspects of engineering that I love - creativity, working within interesting sets of constraints, and finding and pushing the limits. I like finding out what hobbies students are excited about, and then discovering with them areas where engineering overlaps.

We continue to read that American kids are falling behind in the STEM areas. Is that true?
Yes, as I understand it as well. At least I read the same reports. It's certainly discouraging, but whenever I connect directly with students, I feel strong affirmation that there's incredible passion and potential all over the place. The kids out there are sharp - just watch them solve a hands-on problem that they're interested in. I'm impressed all the time!

What is the best moment when you are working with a kid or group of kids on a project?
One of my favorite things was actually just something that I overheard a young boy discussing with his dad at an event. I'm guessing he was about seven years old, and I didn't even know what they were talking about, but the dad asked "Do you think that would be possible?" and the boy answered "Maybe, but you'd need a completely different set of materials." I was so impressed! He clearly had and understanding of what the proposed idea would need to perform, and he also understood the limitations of whatever materials were in question to begin with, and he knew it wouldn't work. That's some pretty advanced thinking in my opinion, especially for somebody so young. I love it when stuff like that happens.

You have invented some super cool things (that's technical language, of course) and hold a number of patents. when did your interest in engineering begin?
Thanks! I'll put "engineering" in quotes, because I didn't really know that what I loved to do was related to engineering until I was in college. I've always loved making things, being creative, and solving problems. And like countless other kids, I've been doing it since I was really young. I started with blocks (how can I make this structure not fall down?) moved to Legos, built forts, and used my imagination all the time. So being creative and solving problems really feels more like a way of life to me, and engineering is the profession I get to do where those activities can make me a good living!

Can you tell us about your kitchen experiment gone wrong?
The "rocket fuel incident..." oh yes. In high school I read the book October Sky, and made the connection that the "rocket boys" featured in the book were mixing up concoctions for their rocket fuel that I also knew how to make based on what I'd been learning in advanced chemistry class. Cool! Now there's some STEM-application opportunities for you. I designed an experiment where I could test the potency of those mixtures against the ones you could buy at the store, and set to work mixing up some of the ingredients over the stove. As you can imagine, it's not a perfect process, and some of it... and then suddenly a lot of it... caught fire. And the whole thing about rocket fuel is that it contains its own oxidizer bound up with the combustible part, so a fire extinguisher designed to deprive a fire of oxygen from the air doesn't do anything! It eventually burned itself out, along with a good portion of the family kitchen. Whoops.

What exactly did your parents and other family members say to you afterwards? Did the police or fire department want to have a word with you?
My parents were incredible. They showed their true colors in their unfailing dedication to hands-on education in that they never raised a voice, and simply said, "well, we were going to remodel either the kitchen or the bathroom. And it's clearly going to be the kitchen!"

And I did have a visit from the fire department. Our longtime neighbor from two doors down was actually the fire chief, and I suspect that after having watched me grow up building all kinds of crazy contraptions, he was kind of expecting something like this to happen. He calmly turned on the lights to his fire chief's vehicle still parked in his driveway, and walked up to our house shaking his head and smiling as I ran out of the smoking house yelling "it's out! It's all under control!" And then began the remodel with me assisting my dad. I learned a lot during that process too, but that's a story for another time.

15 Resolutions For Vendors

2011-12-13T14:50:00.000-08:00

by David Berkowitz , Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2011

I can’t do my job without great vendor relationships, but I could do my job a lot better if vendors focused on building relationships first and selling later.

Over the course of a year, I’ll get about a thousand pitches from vendors. The great ones lead to vendors becoming partners. The bad pitches get deleted. The worst get forwarded around.

In light of that, here’s my wish list for vendors. Vendors that follow the list will win more business. Granted, the best vendors don’t need this list at all, but most can use at least a few reminders.

BEFORE THE MEETING
1) Do your homework. Google whom you’re meeting with. Find shared connections on LinkedIn. Look at recent agency news.

2) Be personal. A one-line description of what you do is so much more effective than a form letter.

3) Ask questions. It’s in my best interest to make the meeting as productive as possible, so if I can help with that in any way, I will.

4) Listen. I may tell you that just because I have the word “media” in my title doesn’t mean I’m a media buyer. That’s probably an indication that you shouldn’t keep telling me about your CPMs. This is just one of the more egregious and oft-repeated examples.

5) Confirm meetings. The element of surprise is vastly overrated.

DURING THE VISIT
6) Show up five minutes early. If you’re on time, you’re late, given the time it usually takes to set up.

7) BYOD: Bring your own dongle.

8) Show, don’t sell. Share live demos of the site or app whenever possible. Make it interactive.

9) Get to your examples early. I love the meetings where the vendor says, “You guys are really well ahead of the curve, so you don’t need our 20 slides on making the case for social media,” and then they spend the next half hour on those 20 slides. Cut the set-up and get right to what you’re doing.
10) Co-create. Often, the best meetings I’m in involve impromptu brainstorms. You’re the product experts; we’re the experts on our clients’ needs and plans. Seize the opportunity to bring the two together.

11) Food helps. In his bestselling book “Influence,” Robert Cialdini wrote, “Using what [psychologist Gregory Razran] termed the ‘luncheon technique,’ he found that his subjects became fonder of the people and things they experienced while they were eating.” And then there’s the illustrious Jenna from “30 Rock,” who timelessly said, “Me want food!” Both apply equally well.

FOLLOWING UP & ONGOING COMMUNICATION
12) Send follow-up collateral in a timely manner. The same day is preferred. If it’s a week later, you risk losing any interest from the initial meeting.

13) Attach small files. Whenever possible, do what you can to make your attachments smaller. I’ve begged and bribed my IT department enough to be able to accept 10MB files, but I can’t quickly forward those to anyone else.

14) Ask before subscribing people to your newsletter. If you’re worried about the response, maybe you don’t need a newsletter. I can’t tell you how often I unsubscribe to these. You know why I don’t need to read newsletters? Because great vendors keep me current with personal updates.

15) Respond fast. If two days go by without a response, I may not remember why I reached out in the first place. Agencies suffer from chronic attention deficit disorder. If you’ll be tied up, send a note saying when a full response will come, or forward the inquiry to someone with more bandwidth.

16) Send case studies. At a Social Times conference years ago, I was on a panel where the last question asked was, “What advice would you give the vendors in the room?” I answered, “Three words: send case studies.” I meant and still mean this in the broad sense. Send live examples. Send results with the client’s name omitted if there are privacy concerns.

Send a great idea you pitched someone else and want to repurpose until you find a buyer. Whatever it is, this is the most important kind of message you can send. When they’re especially interesting, I forward these updates to anyone working on relevant clients’ accounts.

These are starting points. As my CEO would say, they’re table stakes. Practicing these will eliminate a lot of pain points for agencies. Fortunately my job involves far more pleasure than pain.

To the hundreds of vendors I actively work with, I can’t do my job without you. I admire your entrepreneurialism, vision, responsiveness, creativity, showmanship, support, and, in the best cases, friendship. I’m excited to create great experiences together in the year ahead and beyond.

Believe Entertainment Group Believes in the Power of Celebrity Web Hits

2011-12-13T12:50:00.001-08:00

by Daisy Whitney, Tuesday, December 13, 2011 9:52 AM

Finding success in the Web series business is not that different from traditional Hollywood at times. Star power helps a lot.

That’s what digital studio Believe Entertainment Group has been banking on. Believe is the studio behind Web hits like The LeBrons, The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers, Mommycast and Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy. Next up, Believe plans to launch shows with popular DJ Tiesto, an icon of electronic dance music and one of Billboard’s most successful touring acts, and superstar Jennifer Lopez early in 2012. The studio's founders say they’ll look to the success of this past year’s The LeBrons as a framework. That show earned more than 50 million views across YouTube, iTunes, Digital Broadcasting Group and the star’s social channels during its three-month run, a nice performance for the show and for its advertisers, including HP, Intel, Spite, Nike and Bing.

Indeed, celebrity sells.

That may sound obvious, but it’s a fact of the entertainment business that Web producers have shied away from for years and are now returning to. In recent months, the Web publisher SheKnows.com has partnered with celebs like Kate Walsh and Melissa Rivers, while distributors like AOL have said their most popular lifestyle video usually feature famous faces, and even

YouTube is leaning on the world’s brightest stars like Madonna and Jay-Z for its new content initiative.

Believe, too, is choosing to partner with established talent because they bring their own audiences and built-in social distribution to the table when it comes to the Web. “We are not in the business of trying to find the next YouTube star. We try to take marketable talent today and develop shows with A-list talent,” said Bill Masterson, one of the co-founders of Believe.

The company finances most of its shows internally and then reaches out to brands and distributors once a show is already in production. Believe earns revenue from advertising, international licensing and even album deals from its shows, in some cases. Given its recent success with the LeBrons, I asked Masterson and Goodman to share three lessons learned for Web video production.

1. Talent and great content drive audiences, partners, and advertisers, said Dan Goodman, also a co-founder of Believe. “There is no substitute for a tremendous talent,” Goodman said. That’s why the company has chosen to finance its own productions — so it can find the talent it wants to work with.

2. Don’t tie yourself to one distributor. Experiment with YouTube Hulu, Netflix, AOL, Yahoo, MSN and others. These companies are changing shapes and strategies regularly, so it makes sense not to be tethered too closely to one distributor, Goodman said. “We never own the distribution. We don’t ask the distributors for financial support or to finance a show either.” Let the distributors do just that — distribute.

3. Don’t bet on branded entertainment. Start with a show, rather than a brand. “We came to Sprite on the LeBrons after we started production and built ads around the show rather than brainstorming a Sprite show,” Masterson said.

2012: The Year Of The Video View Standard

2011-12-13T11:07:00.001-08:00

by Paul Kontonis , Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2011

How do you define a video view? The answer varies depending on who you ask. Is it once the video starts playing? Does it need to buffer? Does a certain amount of the video need to be played before a view is counted?

There is currently no transparency in the measurement of a video view. Despite the rapid growth of the online video industry, right now you can’t accurately compare video views between two programs, even if they are on the same platform. Your 35 million views may not be any better than someone else's 500,000 views.

Why we need a video view standard
The industry needs to ensure that advertisers get what they pay for and that content creators get credit for their audiences. But the current metrics used to measure video views are confusing and misleading. They’re not helpful to measuring success or determining content value. Currently a view can be any type of “play start.”

That means that what people are counting as video views could have absolutely no user intent -- the video could be set to autoplay, with the sound off and the player embedded below the fold in a 300x250 ad unit. We have all seen videos playing like this on the Web.

In addition, the current measurement for a video view has no duration component. That means that watching five seconds of a five-minute video is counted the same as watching 10 minutes of a 12-minute video.

All of this leads to a view metric that can be easily hijacked by black-hat behavior from unscrupulous publishers, creators and video distributors. We owe it to the industry to prevent that sort of foul play, because view counts can lead to real money for content creators and publishers.

The kind of standard we need
There’s several things we need to look at when determining a video view standard. First, we need to recognize that auto play does have a certain value to it. Much of online video advertising is always set to auto play and then pushed in front of the consumer –- that kind of view does have value.

But the second thing we need to recognize is that a user-initiated view is more valuable. This is where things can get tricky, because of the varying definition of user initiated.

The most obvious example is when someone presses play on a video player and the video starts to play. But how about when someone clicks on a video thumbnail that then takes them to a page where a video player is set to auto-play (with the sound on)? The prime example would be a YouTube video page. These are video views that should be counted as user-initiated.

So here’s what the industry should do. Start with the current metric, where a video view is defined as a play start of any kind. Then go to the number of views that are user initiated, based on a clear definition of user initiated that does its best to limit foul play. (Note: this will definitely cause quite a stir with any company that urgently offers a penny per user-initiated view -- watch how fast they change their offerings).

I would then layer video duration to know how many user-initiated viewers made it through a meaningful length of the video (the 10 out of 12 minutes versus five seconds out of five minutes). The percentages can be debated, but most advertisers certainly want to know how many completed views a video gets if they are considering brand integration.

So the standard could look something like this:
Series 1: Views = 5MM, User Initiated Views = 1MM, Completed UI Views= 50K

Series 2: Views = 1MM, User Initiated Views = 800K, Completed UI Views= 500K

In this example, let’s assume that the length of each video is the same and reaches the same audience. Which show would you consider better to advertise in? Series 1 may be better for a pre-roll buy, and Series 2 would definitely better for brand integration.

So when I chase the dragon and let my mind travel into 2012, I see a video view standard that gets us closer to identifying value in Web video. And ultimately, doing so will help advertisers move more of their budgets to online video. I’ll see you there!

The Digital RFP Is A Frustrating Mess

2011-12-12T08:30:00.000-08:00

Monday, Dec. 12, 2011
By Matt Straz

Recent research tells us what we already know: planning and buying digital media can be highly inefficient. Google opines that 28% of a media buy is soaked up by transactional costs beyond the cost of the media itself.

Ad tech firm Nextmark believes that the labor to execute a digital buy comprises 8% of the cost of media.

Regardless of the exact amount of inefficiency, most agree that the current process is not optimal.

In fact, one of the biggest time sinks in the media buying process is the request for proposal, or RFP. If you talk to people on both the buy side and sell side of this business, you will hear that the RFP is often the bane of their existence.

People who work at agencies are frustrated because RFPs are still largely managed through email. A single RFP sent to a dozen publishers can result in hundreds of emails going back and forth among the parties. Think about that! For a large agency that sends out, say, a thousand digital RFPs each year that means that teams are dealing with over 100,000 emails a year -- just about RFPs.

Most RFPs include Excel files that are attached to the emails. Publishers will often change the format of these files (adding or deleting columns) when they respond to the RFP. Publishers may also change the details in a response -- for example, the agency is looking for women 18-25 but the publisher replies with women 18-29. Unfortunately, this leads to media planners having to reformat all the submissions, which takes even more time.

Because the whole RFP process is manual, different teams within an agency cannot easily see what types of rates the other teams are getting from the same publisher. Compounding this problem is the fact that publishers will often call their product different names depending on the client they are working with. The result is limited pricing transparency across an agency, which makes the RFP process less efficient.

Dealing with RFPs is also no picnic on the publisher side. Sometimes a digital RFP is used as a way for an agency to outsource creativity. “Give us something that has never been done before,” the RFP will ask. So teams will scramble to come up with something that the agency hasn’t seen before.

People on the sell side also struggle with the RFP because the process is not integrated into Salesforce, the sales pipeline management tool that most publishers rely on. With a connection to Salesforce, potential deals must be manually updated each time a deal size changes. This happens a lot in digital media because campaigns can be canceled at any time -- even in the middle of a campaign.

You would think that people would have tried to fix these problems -- and you’d be right. When Donovan Data Systems, the software provider that many agencies use to manage the media purchasing process, recently introduced a new RFP tool in its iDesk product, many people had high hopes. Unfortunately, the tool proved to be unstable for everyday use. As a result, most agencies today still rely on email and attachments to manage the RFP process.

The pending merger of Donovan and MediaBank offers a ray of hope for everyone in media struggling with RFPS. The new company, MediaOcean, would give the business the scale it needs to tackle the industry’s biggest process issues, including RFPs.

While billions of dollars have been invested in creating new forms of consumer media, very little has been spent on the industry’s infrastructure. Hopefully, the Department of Justice will approve this merger soon so that MediaOcean can build the operating system that we all need.

In the meantime, everyone working in the trenches of the media industry deserves our understanding and support. With every new web site, targeting capability or other technology that gets introduced, it is these people that ultimately have to implement the RFP process with tools that are decades old.

Samantha Freeman, a Founding Partner and CEO of Out of the Blue Enterprises

2011-12-12T08:26:00.001-08:00

Answering a few of our questions this week is Samantha Freeman, a Founding Partner and CEO of Out of the Blue Enterprises. Freeman, who co-creates Out of the Blue's new business concepts, oversees production, finance, operations, marketing, licensing and digital development for the company and its Out of the Blue Digital division. Freeman is also Co-Creator and Executive Producer of Out of the Blue's first original property, Super WHY and its online destination (www.pbskids.org/superwhy), Super Why Reading Camps program and apps based on the property. Prior to founding Out of the Blue with Angela Santomero, Freeman toiled for Nickelodeon Consumer Products, initially as VP/Hard Goods and then Soft Goods, where she was responsible for licensing in various categories for a range of the network's properties. She previously served as Director/Marketing at Toy Biz, a division of Marvel Entertainment, and as Product Manger at Mattel developing and marketing Barbie dolls and accessories. She also worked in the gift industry as a Product Development Manager for a division of Russ Berrie. Freeman lives in NYC with her husband and two sons.

Which comes first: the area of childhood development you want to focus on or a new character that will engage kids?
It always comes back to the same question: chicken or egg? But we like to go with chicken AND egg, because the character and content really go hand in hand. Since many of our properties are educational, we use our in-house research group to help develop and refine unique curriculum-based show concepts. When kids emotionally connect with a character, they are more interested in watching that show and learning the subject matter, so we always work to create characters that kids aspire to be like or want to play with. Our goal is to integrate the child development content with compelling characters in an engaging and truly seamless way.

How many versions of Whyatt Beanstalk, Super WHY's main character did you develop before one really visually pleased you?
At least 50 different versions! We played around a lot with the character's proportions and facial features. When the eyes and mouth are farther apart, the character looks older. When they are closer together, he looks younger and cuter. Same with the body proportions. At one point his skin was green! One thing we did know from very early on was that we wanted to have a character who looked slightly older than our target audience. Then, we went directly to kids with two or three different versions to see which they liked. The version we ultimately chose was one that the kids thought could be a friend but also someone they aspired to be.

What is the Super WHY Reading Camp program? How do the camps work?
Our Super WHY Reading Camp program allows us to bring the mission of the show one step further by connecting directly with preschoolers on a grassroots level and helping them learn important reading skills. They're led by individual PBS stations in partnership with local education organizations and take place during the summer and school breaks in dozens of markets around the country. Each camp is basically a fun one to three week-long interactive learning adventure with a proven curriculum inspired by the series that lets campers play with letters, words and sounds.

With The Fred Rogers Company, you have developed Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, based on the iconic original series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. How did you approach developing the series and incorporate some of the original characters and new characters based on the original ones.
This project is very special to us because we are all fans of the original Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood show. We really wanted to create a "next generation" of Make Believe because this allowed us to feature the characters people know and love from the original show; X the Owl, Henrietta Pussycat, Daniel Tiger, and Lady Elaine, while also giving us a platform to develop new characters that are younger, just like our audience. We wanted "Daniel Tiger junior," the main character in our new preschool spinoff series, to relate to viewers in a personal way, like a young Fred Rogers. He even wears the signature red sweater and sneakers!

Is there a new project on your drawing board that you're now really excited about?
I'm really excited about the work we're doing in our new mobile division, Out of the Blue Digital, for both original and third-party properties. We just developed an app for Ludorum's Chuggington TV series, called "Chuggington: Terrific Trainee!" It's a multi-level game that combines the fun of train play with the intuitive Multi-Touch of iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. We're proud of this new app because it offers an age-appropriate skill and action game for train fans and fans of the show. And, it looks beautiful. We're also working with University Games, home of Colorforms, the beloved brand now celebrating its 60th anniversary, and we look forward to sharing some exciting news soon...! What's great about making content for mobile devices is that, compared to a television show, which can take up to five years to develop, produce and launch on-air, we can develop an app, from start to finish, in just five months.

Earlier in your career you managed the action figure business for Marvel properties, including Spiderman, X-Men, and The Hulk. Have they informed the Super WHY character toys and apps in any way?
Marvel brands were created for older boys and not specifically targeted to preschoolers, even though some younger boys and siblings play with them. I think I recognized, years ago, that there was an untapped opportunity for an age-appropriate non-violent superhero, like Super Why, that moms would appreciate and embrace... especially one that helps kids learn to read!

What is the most outrageous suggestion for the use of a kid's character that you decided just would never make it in the marketplace?
Hmmm... I don't know that we've ever rejected any characters for being too outrageous. But, when naming our company, we wanted to pick something that leveraged the equity of Blue's Clues, the property created by my business partner, Angela Santomero, and that many of our staff worked on as well. Believe it or not, we seriously considered, but ultimately rejected, the name "Purple Schmurple!"

Ok, which toy based on TV, movie or book meant the most to you when you were a kid? Do you still have it?
Probably my Wonder Woman metallic arm bands. I wish I still had them because they gave me superpowers. But, my most favorite toy keepsake is a personalized "Samantha" Barbie doll that the designers made for me when I left Mattel to go to business school. She is displayed in my office, complete with a college sweatshirt, platform shoes, and extra nails for hell week ;-)

Ten Things Every Filmmaker Should Know About Distribution Deals

2011-12-09T11:38:00.001-08:00

By Dan Schoenbrun, Filmmaker Magazine Blog

I'll be blogging this week from the 2011 IFP Filmmaker Labs, which are in their third and final session at 92Y Tribeca. Things kicked off this morning with a sobering discussion about sales and rights, led by Selling Your Film Without Selling Your Soul author Jon Reiss.

Alongside the other lab leaders, Reiss stressed that filmmakers should always use a sales agent and/or lawyer when structuring contracts. But even with these professionals on your side, it's still absolutely essential that filmmakers have at least a basic familiarity about how deals work, in order to avoid common pitfalls and stay informed.

Here are ten essential points stressed this morning, that all business-savvy filmmakers should keep in the back of their minds:

1. Overall deals are nearly extinct
Gone are the days when distributors will purchase rights in one high-paying fell swoop. There are still rare instances of these types of deals (for instance, Focus's deal with Pariah at Sundance last year), but split rights deals are much more common nowadays. In a split rights deal, distributors only purchase certain rights (ie: DVD, VOD, digital).

2. There's no shame in service deals
In a service deal, you pay the distributor to distribute your film, rather than vice versa.
This practice has become much more common in recent years, with major, reputable distributors like Roadside Attractions taking on more service deals. While this type of deal doesn't promise financial benefits, it does leave more power in the hands of the filmmaker. You'll be able to work closely with the distributor to carve out a unique marketing and release strategy.

3. Theatrical distribution is really expensive
Filmmakers should never expect to turn a profit on theatrical distribution. Getting a theatrical run is a costly, time consuming endeavor, and distributors traditionally take over 50% of the eventual gross for themselves (and that's after they take their initial distribution fee and recoup all their expenses.) Theatrical is so expensive that distributors commonly write a cross-collateralization clause into their contract, meaning that they can divert profits from other platforms they're releasing your film on to cover theatrical losses.

The biggest benefit of theatrical distribution is critical attention. It's difficult to attract mainstream press without opening in New York or Los Angeles. If a NY Times review is not absolutely essential to you, you might want to rethink your need to play the Angelika.

4. The bigger the distributor, the less control you have
Small, niche distributors are more likely to take input from the filmmaker. It's not uncommon for big distributors to bypass the filmmaker altogether, finalizing trailers, releasing key art, even re-cutting the film itself without ever consulting you. When structuring a deal, you should be sure to educate yourself about what the approval process for marketing decisions will be like.

5. Always try to cap expenses
Distributors bill all expenses back to themselves, so make sure they're not going to spend money needlessly. Try to build in mandatory approvals past a mutually negotiated expense cap. This is especially relevant when it comes to foreign sales deals.

6. Be patient about getting paid
As hard as it is just to get a deal that's going to make money, it's even harder to actually get that money in hand. For theatrical deals, the distributor needs to first get paid by the theater before sending you a check. And for DVD, it can take over a year before you see your first payment. This is because retailers build in holdbacks to their deals with distributors in order to account for returns on unsold items.

7. Watch out for middlemen, especially when it comes to digital rights
In order to get a film onto a digital platform, distributors go through content aggregators. An aggregator does two things: they optimize your film for digital use and they do the actual selling to iTunes, Netflix, ect. They also take an additional fee (as does the platform itself.) Unfortunately, it's nearly impossible to bypass the aggregator in this scenario.

The important thing to watch out for is a distributor who does not have direct connections to an aggregator. Instead, this type of distributor will partner with another distributor to get to the aggregator. This adds another middleman into the scenario; a middleman who is going to take yet another fee. When structuring a digital rights deal, make sure the distributor has as direct a connection as possible to the online platforms

8. Selling your digital rights can be an impersonal process
Aggregators generally package films in bulk. Filmmakers should not expect to be working intimately with these companies to carve out a unique, personalized marketing plan.

You also shouldn't expect a lot of reporting about how well your film is doing. Digital platforms do not release statistics on demographics, or even on number of views. Really, all you're likely to ever receive from a company like Netflix is a flat fee for the license they've purchased.

9. Try to build guarantees into your contract
You should always be able to get out of a distribution deal that isn't yielding the expected results. It's common to build in a clause that voids the deal if the distributor hasn't released your film after a certain period of time (usually one year). Some contracts also build in a guarantee about money, stipulating that if the distributor does not raise a certain amount of money over a given time period, the deal is voided.

10. Talk to other filmmakers
Last but not least, you should always talk to your peers. Get in contact with filmmakers who've worked with the distributor you're considering before, and ask them about their experiences. Don't be shy about asking the distribution company itself to put you in contact with former clients.

What Online Video Viewers Want: A Good Laugh

2011-12-09T11:23:00.001-08:00

by Daisy Whitney, Friday, December 9, 2011 8:45 AM

“Comedy. Love, and a bit with a dog.”

That’s what audiences have always craved, according to theater impresario Philip Henslowe in “Shakespeare in Love.” A recent study from Blinkx subsidiary Burst Media seems to confirm that observation. Well, at least the first part.

In a survey of more than 1,000 online adults, Burst found that comedy is the most popular form of online video programming with about 39% of users saying they tune into the Web for a laugh, while 33% like news and 31% chose music. Men 18 to 34 remain the top consumers of Web video, with nearly 20% saying they watch 10 or more hours of Web video each week, compared with about 39% of respondents saying they watch between 1 and 5 hours each week.

The good news for brands is that consumers are more likely to interact with online video ads than most other Internet ads. About 18% said they have taken some sort of action based on an online video ad. That includes visiting the advertiser’s Web site or making a purchase.

Maybe the rest just aren’t paying attention to ads, though, because about 80% of online video viewers say they’re using the Web while watching TV. Or maybe they’re not watching TV ads either. But we knew that already.

Interestingly, Burst’s findings dovetail with MagnaGlobal’s just-released annual state of advertising report. The media giant reported that online video grew nearly 59% in 2011, hitting $4.7 billion in revenues.

“Pre- and mid-rolls in online videos now generate 6% of total Internet advertising revenues and one percent (1.1%) of global advertising revenues. Even more than online video sharing specialists, TV broadcasters offering free, ad-funded online ‘catch-up’ of long-form, full-length episodes are driving category growth,” MagnaGlobal said.

How YouTube Became A Community

2011-12-06T13:06:00.001-08:00

by David Berkowitz , Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2011

Hey, community managers, the good news is that you have a new community to manage. Of course, that’s also the bad news.

YouTube has always been a funny site to include in social media plans. In the past, it hadn’t felt that social. Unlike Facebook, Twitter, and other explicitly social properties, it’s possible to use YouTube with absolutely no social interaction.

For instance, if you’re interested in finding more coverage about the White House’s proposed extension of payroll tax cuts, you can search YouTube and find footage from the White House, Reuters, Fox News, and other established media outlets. Or perhaps you’re a normal human being and you just want to see a music video you heard about, or get a walk-through for a challenging Angry Birds level. In those cases, you’re still just there to find a video, watch it, and move on.

Sure, user-generated content has always been central to YouTube’s success, but even that is often used for broadcasting rather than interaction. And the first widely recognized breakout hit on YouTube, “Lazy Sunday,” was a “Saturday Night Live” sketch (it was shortly thereafter removed from YouTube; instead, you have to go to Hulu or NBC.com to watch it).

YouTube can rightfully counter that it’s tremendously social. Its stat roundup notes that 150 years of YouTube videos are watched daily on Facebook, and 100 million people take a social action on YouTube weekly. With an audience of 800 million unique users, it’s an increasingly social audience. Yet it never really felt like a place for community. It always felt like a way to distribute content -- a channel.

The latest updates to YouTube change everything. There are a couple reasons for this in particular:

1) The homepage is entirely designed around subscriptions, whether that’s to people, publishers, or brands. Your experience on YouTube now heavily depends on these content creators and curators, whose updates appear in a central column reminiscent of Facebook’s News Feed. In my center column as I write this, I see updates from my friends: Jeremiah Owyang shared a video on Google+, Kevin Nalts uploaded a new short, and Walt Ribeiro commented on a music video. These are mixed in with uploads from NASA, Old Spice, Coca-Cola, and National Geographic Channel.

2) As a content producer on YouTube, it’s no longer just about uploading videos. You can share videos with comments, or even post textual status updates. These are far more social and conversational features, rather than before when it was solely about broadcasting your own content. There are more ways to engage audiences.

Granted, this could just turn YouTube into a new form of an interactive program guide. But the more time I spend with the new YouTube, the more I’m sucked into it because of the social features. If Coca-Cola publishes a video and I like the brand, sure, I’ll want to get those updates; as they’re a client, I’m especially interested. If a friend shares a Coca-Cola video, though, then it will really stand out, and I’ll be far more likely to watch it.

Now this leads to a whole series of contorted pros and cons and benefits and challenges. As a consumer, I’m now more motivated to return to YouTube to see what other people are sharing, and possibly share more videos myself. But a lot of the videos are being shared on Facebook and Google+, so then maybe I don’t need to spend any additional time at youtube.com.

Then again, there’s so much noise on other social networks that I’ll need to go to YouTube’s homepage to see what my friends are sharing. But do I really need to see more content? As an added hurdle, it’s harder to find and add friends on YouTube than it is on just about any other network.

I don’t know where I’ll net out as a user, but the fact that people can make all of these decisions about YouTube is a strong indicator that community managers need to pay attention. Brands that are already active on YouTube now have a chance to see which approaches attract more viewers, subscribers, and interactions.

Should a brand upload more videos? What about sharing more of others’ videos? What about creating new playlists? Do textual updates generate any responses or make a difference in some way? It’s not clear, and it will likely vary based on the brand and how consumers relate to that brand. Yet those brands active on YouTube can start finding out what works. Brands that aren’t involved with YouTube may be more motivated to try it.

All of this means that community managers have more work to do. Given how much demand there is for their services right now, I’m not sure how many are thrilled by the news. They should relish knowing that all of the Web is readily migrating to their worldview, with every site a community just waiting to be managed.

Stacey Matthias, Co-CEO of Insight Strategy Group,

2011-12-06T12:51:00.001-08:00

Answering a few questions this week is Stacey Matthias, Co-CEO of Insight Strategy Group, which prior to this week was known as Insight Research Group. Matthias co-founded Insight Strategy Group in 1998 with Boaz Mourad. A human development expert, prior to this she worked for Applied Research Consulting (ARC), and before that for Sach's Insights, where she managed research studies on interactive applications. Before stepping into the research arena Matthias developed educational software for HyperStudio, and taught in a Head Start Classroom. She is currently a Ph.D candidate at CUNY in Developmental Psychology. Matthias and Mourad live in NYC with their two daughters.

You've worked a range of kid-centric clients, including Crayola, Nickelodeon, Corus Entertainment and Scholastic, among many others, what are these companies looking for when they come to your firm?
The common denominator is that our clients want to build beloved brands and successful businesses while doing right by kids. We believe our job is to help our clients to create inspiring experiences for children experiences that help kids have fun while doing the work of growing up.

What is the biggest challenge for you about doing research with kids to make sure that you are getting honest and useful responses?
The biggest challenge is to make the research fun for kids. We know we get the clearest, most honest responses when kids are truly engaged. So as much as possible, we try to integrate play and "data collection."

In addition, the key is to meet kids where they are developmentally we tailor our research approach to the age group we are studying based on what we know about where they are in their cognitive, emotional and physical development. For instance, we may ask a 3 year old, who is still a very concrete thinker, to express their opinion of a TV show or product by pointing at pictures of kids with happy or sad faces. For a 10 year old who has more sophisticated cognitive abilities we can ask them to sort, prioritize and engage in abstract exercises like "if this toy was a country what would it be like to live there?"

As you say on your website, kids are different. How does doing research with kids differ from doing the same with adults or specifically their parents?
In terms of research techniques, what works well with kids works with adults, but the reverse is not true. So we find our kid techniques often migrate to our adult practice! For example, inspired by a method we used with children, we asked women to role play with dolls to gain insight into their perspective on evolving gender roles.

In terms of the parent/child dynamic, we find that parents know their kids well, of course, but often can't predict what their kids will like or why they will like it. We often talk to parents and kids together, and then separate them to get a reaction to a new concept, show or product. This will reveal disparities like yesterday a mom said a show was "too dark and too scary" while at the same time her son was telling us "It's awesome because [the good guy] really has to fight for what's right and do the right thing. I like how he is brave even though the [the bad guy] is so super strong and scary."

You are co-CEO with Boaz Mourad (also your husband), how does that work? I love my husband, but doubt I could work in the same office with him every day...
It is funny, because at this point it is hard to imagine not working together! It's a true partnership in our relationship, as parents, and at work. I feel lucky to have a business partner (and husband) for whom I have so much trust and respect. In both work and as a couple, we think alike in many many ways, and are also quite different from each other which provides a healthy balance. I think we are both considered to be pretty strong thinkers, but I play the idealist and he plays the realist (except when it comes to vacations, then we switch). It's a yin/yang thang.

Have you ever had a situation where the kids in research said one thing and the product was released and the public response was vastly different?
Never. Just kidding. People ask this question a lot, and it's tough because it is not a simple linear relationship. Many factors impact how a product or media property comes to market the marketing behind it, how it is executed in the end, what the competition is doing at time of release, what expectations for success are for the client, etc. All this being said, we usually have a pretty strong sense of the flops and the winners early on. A big part of what we do is reduce risk by helping to identify things that aren't working and to inform how to improve them before they come to market.

You grew up moving around a lot, spending much of that time traveling in a VW bus. How did that experience inform what you do now?
Life is funny. I think my nomadic upbringing made me a sort of social scientist at a young age. Moving around to different regions of the country and living in their different sub-cultures, I always had to figure out which social norms stayed the same and which ones changed. Of course this wasn't conscious of it at the time, but as I entered into a new school or town I was trying to decipher "How do people in this place work? What are the rules?" My husband and partner moved around a lot too, so we have this in common.

I have personally sat in a lot of research rooms and have heard lots of strange and funny things. What is the funniest or wildest thing a kid has ever said during a focus group?
Well this wasn't a kid, but last week a mom emailed us a picture of her kid's poop on the floor. That was unprecedented.

So moms can be wacky (as well as wise). Kids are usually cute and profound at the same time. Like describing SpongeBob as "nerdy in a good way" or in response to the line "nobody is perfect." A 6 year old responds, "That's not true. Everyone is perfect."

Ummmmm - interesting, I can honestly say that is unique. Did the mom indicate that this had anything to do with what you were talking about in the focus group?
I have to protect client confidentiality, but suffice to say we are doing a study on how things are movin'.

Four Best Practices for Online Video from MediaVest

2011-12-06T12:47:00.001-08:00

by Daisy Whitney, Tuesday, December 6, 2011 11:43 AM

As the online video economy expands, agencies continue to refine their rules of the road. That’s why whenever I have the chance to chat with executives at media agencies, I like to ask them to share tips on what works and what doesn’t work in online video. Recently, Jeff Rossi VP and Digital Director, MediaVest spoke at the ad:tech conference and I asked him to share some additional best practices for online video with MediaPost as well.

Establish Creative Norms

Apples aren’t oranges, so let’s not compare them. Grouping 15-second or 30-second pre-rolls in with auto-play videos that run below the fold isn’t helpful to agencies or marketers. “In the same way we would never lump a display banner with a text link, we need to establish more rigor to how we evaluate video,” Rossi said.

Establish Standard Key Performance Indicators

Online video advertising has primarily been used by marketers for branding. That makes sense – sight, sound and motion has always been the ultimate branding tools. That may change soon though, Rossi said, since marketers now the ability to behaviorally target video in the same way they would display. “Once we have norms in creative, we also must create standard practices in KPIs,” he said.

Universal Tracking Across Video & Display

While video and display are different beasts, the industry would benefit from being able to measure them in some sort of consistent way. Since marketers may be reaching the same consumers via display ads and video ads, it would be helpful to track duplicated audiences. “In order to calculate accurate reach and frequency, a consistent ad serving platform is essential,” Rossi said.

Education: Learning is critical

With so many content creators, video ad networks, rich media companies and others participating and sharing info on the online video business, marketers will be most successful when they make a concerted effort to evaluate and learn from the market. “Understanding the opportunities and nuances of the space will help ensure a solution that is best,” concluded Rossi.

Why The Operational Half Of Metrics Is In Trouble (And How To Fix It)

2011-12-06T12:11:00.001-08:00

by Bill Wise, Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2011

A lot of the metrics conversation revolve around computational issues -- questions of what data we have and how we can use it best, or how we can create proxies for data that we’re missing.

Obviously, the computational discussions are critical. But often, the computational discussions ignore the fundamental problems we face in actually making the metrics feasible: the problems in technology and operations that stand between a smart media community and a truly efficient one.

So in the interest of having that complete conversation, I wanted to spend this piece exploring the major operational challenges that media metrics face. I’ll name just a few below.

Manual labor. Much of the media buying on the world’s most high-tech advertising gets bought and sold through a shockingly low-tech array of phone calls, e-mails to multiple people, and faxes (yes, faxes -- can’t you just hear the annoying sound?). Meanwhile, much of the record-keeping and data management is conducted in standard spreadsheet software.

That’s especially true for the very large digital ad buys. Industry estimates find that, for a $500,000 digital media buy, anywhere from 8% to a whopping 28% of the cost is represented by manual labor. (The latter figure comes from Google, a company I’ll come back to below.) By comparison, TV transaction costs are around 2% to 3% for manual work.

That’s a real challenge for those of us in the metrics business, for two reasons. First, every time a human touches a piece of data, the chances of human error go up. Second, manual labor is slower than machine labor -- which means there are orders of magnitude fewer computations that can happen when you don’t have machines doing the grunt work. Combine those two points, and you get media management that’s less data-rich, and more accident-prone, than is good for gathering good metrics.

One media universe, siloed businesses. One of the greatest successes of digital media has been the interconnectedness of all media forms: we’re all at home with print ads that trigger mobile sites connected with standard websites that influence iPad apps. But while the media touchpoints are hyper-connected, they’re generally operated by unique businesses, or siloed units of the same business. And siloed businesses mean siloed data, as well.

That has serious implications for how we handle cross-channel metrics. When different businesses own different parts of the buy funnel, everyone will tell a different story about who should get credit for conversions. The controversies over last-click attribution and view-throughs are probably the most glaring example of the problems that ensue from the situation, but they’re hardly the only ones.

Network-side planning tools. As I’ve mentioned in this space before, Google Analytics is the most widely used Web analytics tool on earth. It’s also just one part of Google’s wider set of widely popular planning tools, from keyword-buying suggestions to measurement on other sites. This is the same Google that owns, by many standards, the largest ad network on earth. And since a lot of the media guidance comes either in the form of hard metrics, or in metrics-driven planning, this is effectively a case of advertisers turning key metrics functions over to the networks they’re buying from.

Of course, Google is just one of many networks that offer planning tools to the advertisers they’re selling ads to. Considering the ubiquity of those planning tools, and how many businesses use them as their sole planning tools (rather than as directional references in a larger chorus of multiple metrics sources), we’re confronting a problem of neutrality across the media metrics business. As Google and other networks seem keen to take their planning tools heavily upmarket to major advertisers and agencies, it’s an issue that’s certainly worth pausing to examine.

Tying it all together. The solution to these problems lies in creating information management that allows fluid interactions across buyers, sellers, and media touchpoints -- that don’t come from the networks looking to sell more ads.

To be sure, a lot of very smart, effective businesses have been created around bringing all the data together -- from third-party data providers to data management platforms. But the fact is, we haven’t found a silver bullet just yet.

Ultimately, I think the solution will need to come from greater interoperability between the many different systems that run across media buying and ad ops. Businesses that manage media also need to rethink organizational silos, changing many of their current models for ones that allow them to share information across a new world order. (Two examples of the kind of restructuring I have in mind: Starcom MediaVest replacing marketing mix silos with broader human experience, and Mediabrands’ recategorizing of international management to replace physical geography with market similarity.)

More broadly, the answers need to come from revolutionizing our technology and processes in ways that understands that we’re at a juncture in media history in which we’re both fantastically unified and frighteningly splintered at once. When our metrics management needs to take both sides of that picture into account, we’re well on our way to getting the data leading to the real information that we need.

YouTube: The Monster Search Engine You Can't Ignore

2011-12-06T11:50:00.001-08:00

by Derek Gordon , Monday, Dec. 5, 2011

You probably already know this: YouTube is now the second largest search engine, having displaced Yahoo Search earlier this year. So, that’s big. And now that YouTube has a spiffy new interface, it’s a good time to think about (or rethink) your video content and promotion strategies.

As I’ve discussed before, video is an increasingly potent and effective way to drive leads, demand generation and sales, both for B2B and B2C companies of all sizes. Setting up and managing an effective YouTube channel has gotten a little easier with the new YouTube design. Moreover, Promoted Video Ads in YouTube search results pages, which are a lot like AdWords ads in Google SRPs (surprise, surprise), can be a very effective way to drive traffic to your video content and YouTube Channel. (More about that in a moment.)

While there are a few new things in the YouTube design (most notably better social sharing and customizable channels), all the features you’re accustomed to are still there. Which means there’s more opportunity than ever to leverage your YouTube channel to meet key objectives.

Be sure you learn about how best to set up and optimize your YouTube channel, including the new search and social features, and be sure you’ve properly branded and organized your channel with links to your website, Facebook Page and Twitter channel.

Once this is accomplished, given the range of features now available, you should be asking yourself these questions for each video you upload to your channel:

1. Did my audience watch it? Track how many views each of your videos has gotten. Critically review your most popular videos to learn from your successes and to apply those lessons to future projects.

2. Did my audience click? In the video description field, use opportunities to add links to your website, and include special offers with links to dedicated landing pages. Track clicks on those links and see how well they convert.

3. Did my audience share it? YouTube audiences can now share videos they like instantly across their Google+ Circles, Facebook friends and Twitter followers, among others. So you’ll want to track the number of times any given video has been shared.

4. Did my audience subscribe? The new interface makes organizing and checking in on all your channel subscriptions a lot easier, and, overall, it’s more intuitive now. As a result, more people than ever will be subscribing to channels they want to follow, so be sure you’re optimizing for and tracking subscriptions.

Remember, it’s critically important that you’re using Descriptions, Tags and Categories to their fullest advantage when publishing a new video to your channel. It will optimize your content and channel for organic search results on YouTube and Google.

Also, where possible, enable comments in order to fully engaged your community. Finally, be helpful to your community. Use the new Feed feature to provide updates to them, highlight videos you like and to impart information about your company.

And about that advertising I was talking about? Promoted Video Ads help to drive traffic to video content and your channel. In the same way that Google highlights text ads at the top of search results, YouTube features promoted videos at the top of a list of video search results. Promoted Video Ads also enable the addition of overlays to videos that include links back to your website, microsite or dedicated landing page.

It’s the perfect way to “embed” a clickable link on your own videos.

As always, organizing your keyword lists, bidding strategy, budget and click goals are all critical. If you’re already using a third-party search marketing tool like Marin Software or Kenshoo, you should be able to organize your YouTube campaigns using it.

2012 Predictions: Are Growth Estimates Actually Too Low?

2011-12-02T12:04:00.001-08:00

by Neil Perry , Thursday, Dec. 1, 2011

Who the heck knows what the future may bring, right? Well, with New Year 2012 coming up fast, I’m not going to let that stop me. I’m going to give you some predictions, all expanding upon trends and developments several other writers and I have been noting in this column throughout the past year. It will be fun in December of 2012 to take a look back at this piece to see to what extent these prognostications prove to be accurate.

Without further ado, here are some predictions for the New Year in online video:

Online video growth exceeds projections. While some people have dismissed the robust growth predictions for online video as being too Pollyannaish or bullish, I would actually be shocked if the projected spend in online video not only hits the widely discussed eMarketer metric of a 43% increase for 2012, but exceeds this by another 20% of that percentage once everything is all said and done, showing roughly 50% growth. Why? Read on:

Video-ization of the Web to continue. The overall growth in online video will be fueled in large part not by online video advertising, but by the broader video-ization of the World Wide Web. Brands and advertisers are actively swapping out black- and-white text blocks with engaging, informative, and trackable videos and related video messaging.

For example, one of the key areas of video-ization will increasingly be instructional videos: That is, videos on how to set up and use various products, including “unboxing videos” that explain the various components of assembling products as they are removed from their original product packing. The days of lengthy, multilingual and expensive printed manuals are numbered, and will soon come to a close, thanks largely to online videos taking their place.

A 2012 comeback for clickable videos: They came, then they faded, but now they are coming back. I predict a strong return of clickable videos. Thanks to companies like Overlay.TV and its work with Zappos, and others, like Videoclix.TV, Wirewax.TV, and Conciseclick.com, clickable videos are making a resurgence. They work great, and are increasingly easy to set-up.

Importantly, YouTube and its “annotations” approach is further refining this ad execution with some startling results. Brands jumping into the clickable video space include Mitsubishi, Kraft, Macy’s, Mattel, JCPenney and eBay. Here’s a fascinating Interactive Card Trick from YouTube using its annotation technology.

Video Dynamic End Cards – Brands are going to increasingly rely on Dynamic End Cards at the end of their online videos. These static navigational aids appear as an end slate at the conclusion of a video. By clicking on the icons or subjects listed in the end card, the video will take the viewer to another video that will elaborate on a key piece of information alluded to in the original video. Here’s a great example of a Dynamic End Card from a Google Chrome ad.

Metrics, metrics, metrics – The importance of metrics in evaluating online video will only increase in 2012, especially in view of the strong increase in branding messages versus call-to-action ads. The long-predicted Nielsen video metric solution may appear in 2012, but increasingly it looks as if comScore will take over the lead in evaluating online video for marketers in the coming year. Having seen some of comScore’s methodology firsthand, I think it could be the solution marketers are looking for in evaluating ads, at least for the coming 12 months.

Ad network consolidation – Nothing too bold here, but with the increased importance of metrics (as well as the overall growth in spend), I fully expect that those video ad networks that do the best jobs of providing truly usable data to their clients will be the ones that grow and prosper.I further expect that there will be some serious consolidation taking place in 2012. As we’ve seen in “traditional” online advertising, the best will swallow the also-ran networks, as there is a lot of overlap and duplication in the existing network line-ups anyway.

Well, this is where I think things are going to go with online video in 2012. What do you think? And remember to check back with me in December of 2012 to see how close these predictions came to being true.

Search On The Move

2011-12-02T10:45:00.001-08:00

by Roger Barnette , Friday, Dec. 2, 2011

Internet searches have clearly broken free of the tethers to desktop or laptop, home or office.

Smartphone ubiquity and the increasing popularity of tablets for casual computing have caused all of us to have multiple primary devices to access information on the Web. And the increasing sophistication of voice recognition on these devices only accelerates this trend.

IgnitionOne’s research showed that in the first half of Q4, consumers’ mobile search activity skyrocketed, with paid search clicks jumping 355% compared to the same time in 2010. This is a huge jump off a relatively small base, but more shocking is that by 2014 mobile Internet use is predicted to take over desktop Internet usage. Already, one half of all local searches are performed on mobile devices.

The implications for marketers -- and search marketers specifically -- are huge. It is not just where users are doing the search that has changed, but how users do that searching. Marketers need to be prepared for the rise in mobile adoption and the shift in behaviors that come with it. And if they act quickly, search marketers can even be in a position to take advantage of this trend.

Keywords. Be sure to include specific locations in your keywords and focus on actions to be taken at that location. Also anticipate shorter search phrases, as mobile users tend to type shorter queries. This will require search marketers to generate large numbers of localized two-, three-, and four-word keyword combinations. It is also worth noting that typos in search terms increase markedly on mobile devices.

Campaign optimization. Mobile searchers are more likely to make a purchase in the next 24 hours -- but may not make the purchase on their phones. Consider separate campaigns for desktop vs mobile vs tablet to ensure that potential customers see your ads across all their device options. And if mobile search is important for your campaign, it is important to consider your ad placement, as the smaller mobile screen increases the importance of higher placement.

Site optimization. Mobile searchers have different interface and experience needs than desktop computer users. Make sure you have a mobile-friendly version of your Web site. When users click on your search ad from their phones, the flow to access the information they are seeking -- or buy the product they want to buy -- must be simple and intuitive. It may be worth considering segmenting your mobile site to be more granular with simple, action-oriented pages.

Tracking and analytics implications. Your potential customers are accessing your paid ads across multiple devices as they move down the purchase funnel. This means your cross-channel attribution modeling just became much more difficult -- but also that much more important. Technologies are being created to track users across devices, so keep a close eye on developments in this area, as this issue will become a big story in the next few quarters.

The trend toward computing mobility will only accelerate as consumers continue to get savvier with mobile searches and as technology makes searching on the go easier. Smartphones and tablets will become the primary interface for individuals with only casual computing needs. So if you have not yet considered mobile search in your marketing plans, the time is now.

Seven Lessons From Steve Jobs For Search Marketers

2011-12-01T11:37:00.001-08:00

by Aaron Goldman , Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011

I just finished Walter Isaacson’s epic Steve Jobs biography. Beyond being a captivating (and surprisingly quick, considering its 571 pages) read about the life and times of one of the most influential and controversial people in technology, the book imparts some important lessons for search marketers.

1. Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. This was the tagline that adorned the first Apple II brochure in 1977 and became a mantra that stuck. “The main thing is that we have to make things intuitively obvious,” Jobs said in discussing his design philosophy. Much of this approach was rooted in his Zen Buddhist training and Bauhaus influence. I see the results firsthand each time my three-year-old daughter swipes to open our iPad, pulls up the Netflix app and finds a Curious George video to watch instantly.

For search marketers, it’s easy to get lost in the complexity of data analysis and campaign management -- but sometimes, you have to step back and focus on the basics like creating a compelling call-to-action in your ad copy. Tell people what you want them to do. And clearly state why they should do it.

2. You don’t have to be first, you just have to be best.
The bitmapped graphical user interface created for the original Macintosh was first concepted by Xerox PARC and shown to Jobs in 1979. In an interview with Isaacson, Jobs boasts, “Picasso had a saying -- ‘good artists copy, great artists steal’ -- and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”

I’m reminded of the scene in the “Social Network” movie where Zuckerberg tells the Winklevoss twins something to the effect of, “If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you’d have invented Facebook.” The point is that it doesn’t matter if you come up with an idea; what matters is if you can execute on it.

In SEM, you don’t have to develop a novel approach to keyword development, campaign structure, or bid management, you just have to apply those tactics better than your competitors.

3. Block out all distractions. Jobs had an uncanny (and often unhealthy) ability to focus by setting his priorities and shunning anything else that vied for his attention. Jobs took this to the extreme by avoiding his health issues (he waited nine months after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer before seeking conventional treatment) and even his family (he would go years without speaking to his daughter Lisa) but there is something to be said for being able to do just a few things -- and doing them well.

In the case of SEM, this means automating everything that can be automated and putting your personal energy into projects that can really move the needle. For example, it can be very tempting to spend all day managing long tail-keywords and bids when that can be handled automatically through a portfolio algorithm, freeing you up to focus on merchandising changes that could make the head (which typically accounts for 80% of your volume) perform much better.

4. When one door closes, another door opens. Much has been made of Jobs’ fanaticism over creating closed (or as he’d like you to say -- integrated) products and platforms. Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak wanted to include eight external slots on the Apple II for users to connect their own components. To Jobs this was “a threat to a seamless end-to-end user experience.” Sure enough, Jobs won out (the Apple II shipped with just two slots) and, to this day, Apple products are built with proprietary hardware and software that are not always compatible with other systems, not to mention “limited” feature sets – for example, no Flash on iPads.

Even the App Store, which many equate with an open ecosystem, is a very closely regulated environment with Apple retaining full control over app approval. Explains Jobs, “We do these things not because we are control freaks. We do them because we want to make great products, because we care about the user, and because we like to take responsibility for the entire experience rather than turn out the crap that other people make.” Compare this to the Microsoft philosophy for Windows or Google’s approach with Android, and you’ll see the different schools of thought.

From an SEM perspective, you’ll want to keep in mind the platform (open or closed) in which your ads are displayed across desktop and mobile devices. With iOS only running on iDevices, it’s a pretty controlled exposure and very affluent consumer target. Leverage device targeting accordingly.
5. Leave no stone unturned. I’ve long believed that it’s the little things that make a big difference. Jobs took this to the extreme, obsessing over the minutest details in product development. For example, Jobs made his team create 20 different versions of the title bars for windows and documents before being satisfied. “Can you imagine looking at that every day?” he asked his team when they complained about the tiny tweaks. “It’s not just a little thing, it’s something we have to do right.”
Jobs also carefully scrutinized the aesthetics of circuit boards inside computers that no consumer would ever see, sending people back to the drawing board for memory chips that had “lines too close together.” When engineers asked why it mattered, Jobs replied, “I want it to be as beautiful as possible, even if it’s inside the box. A great carpenter isn’t going to use lousy wood for the back of a cabinet, even though nobody’s going to see it.”

To succeed in SEM, you have to maintain the utmost self-discipline and tend to every last detail. You never know which variable is going to be the one to make or break your campaign.

6. Nice guys finish last. But you don’t have to be a bad guy to finish first. The book is littered with countless tales of Jobs berating employees, partners, suppliers, and anyone else who got his in his way -- or, as he’d like to think of it, didn’t meet his expectations. Here’s how Issacson assessed Jobs’ nasty temperament: “It hindered him more than helped him. But it did, at times serve a purpose… Dozens of the colleagues whom Jobs most abused ended their litany of horror stories by saying he got them to do things they never dreamed possible.”

To be sure, as Tom McNichol wrote in The Atlantic, “There are plenty of very successful companies that aren't led by assholes… The fact is, Steve Jobs didn't succeed because he was an asshole. He succeeded because he was Steve Jobs.”

It follows that in SEM, or business in general, you have to find the right balance between motivation and defecation.

7. Life is short. Be sure to stop and smell the roses. One thing everyone can agree on when it comes to Steve Jobs is that he died too young. As the stress of hitting your year-end goals engulfs every fiber of your being, remember that it’s just SEM; we’re not saving lives here.
As the saying goes, “No one on their deathbed ever said, ‘I wish I’d spent more time at work.’” Jobs might have been thinking that -- but, instead, his last words were, “OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”

You Want Viral? You Can't Handle Viral!

2011-11-30T13:47:00.001-08:00

Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011

You Want Viral? You Can't Handle Viral!By Cory Treffiletti

Virality. This is the single most overused and meaningless term in digital marketing today. With virality, content is being shared by a great mass of people -- which can happen either spontaneously, through great planning or dumb luck. Virality is what we all want, and it’s something many of us will never get.

There are elements that you can manipulate to try and increase the opportunity for something viral to take place, but you can’t control it. In the immortal words of Dan Patrick from his days at ESPN, “You can’t stop it; you can only hope to contain it.”

You need a few key ingredients to create something that could go viral:

1. Strong, engaging, funny or immensely relevant content. Without truly engaging and relevant content, your message will go nowhere. You need the kind of exclusive, first-mover-advantage content that people will see, will immediately apply to themselves and their situations, and will share.

2. Share functionality, built-in and noticeable. Think through the user interface and make sure your share buttons are prominent, easy to use, and tap into Facebook, Twitter and email. Many people forget about email, but the majority of sharing still happens through this channel, so don’t overlook it.

3. A launching pad that stokes the fire for a large initial blast. You need a launching pad, which can be an online campaign using Facebook, banners or in-game text ads. It can also be a TV campaign, or even a print campaign. You need something that can reach a large audience all at the same time, in an uncluttered environment.

4. The launch needs to be a big, fast blitz, not a tempered, gradual release. As they say: Go big or go home. You need to make a quick splash and you need to do it now. That’s the only way to spark the attention of fans and get them to share your content.

“Funny Or Die” is among the best at this, having figured out all of the above and making viral efforts almost better than anyone. Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake should be ushered into the Viral Hall of Fame for their recent efforts with the “History of Rap.” These are the kinds of efforts that gain notoriety immediately, and then just keep on going. They have taken viral to an art form -- one we all desire to emulate.

Of course, relevant to one of my last articles, virality is impossible without great content. To be blunt, crappy content will not be viral. If you are a brand looking to create some viral buzz, or if you are an agency looking to pitch a “viral” campaign (if you are, you should rethink your strategy), then you need to be hyper-critical of yourself. You’d better focus-test that creative to be sure you have something really special.

One last bit of advice: Don’t be afraid to spend money in lieu of virality. You can drive reach in any number of ways, and viral is the most ideal, but reach is reach. Sometimes the tipping point requires more mass reach than you thought.

Don’t you agree?

Get On The Music Boat

2011-11-30T13:46:00.001-08:00

by Bryan Boettger , Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2011

When it comes to online video, music is the single biggest lost opportunity for brands.

It baffles me how a brand can spend $30,000 to $300,000 on product marketing and consumer outreach videos, then not spend another 5% for professional music from either established or unknown artists.

After all, in 1928, Warner Bros. saw 5000% profit margins from its first “talkies” -- films that were primarily musical in nature. More recently, Apple turned the tech industry on its ear through music.
Music affects people. The Pied Piper is a parable -- but it’s also grounded in truth. It’s not just mice that respond to music. People do, too.

And brands aren’t forced to license music from well-established artists. Connect the dots:
DOT ONE While it is difficult to assign an exact number, it’s consensus that several million (that’s million) artists and bands are on MySpace.

DOT TWO Even Michelangelo was paid for the Sistine Chapel.

Patronage of the arts is a time-honored tradition -- a tradition brands have the opportunity to carry forward. Michelangelo took money from the Pope to paint the ceiling of his world’s most important religious real estate. There surely are bands on MySpace that wouldn’t mind moving from “starving” to “slightly well-fed” artists by having their music in a branded product video.

Finding credible artists without high costs isn’t as daunting as it might seem:

Check out the lesser-known artists at music festivals like Outside Lands and Coachella.
Roam the sidewalks of 6th Street in Austin at SXSW.
Or simply watch for who’s coming through town at your smaller music venues.

Here’s the best part: pick the right music, and brands have the opportunity to be labeled as “cool” and “relevant” when the artists make it big. Your brand might even get credit for breaking the band to a wider audience.

Maybe you should pay a little more attention to that band busking on the street corner or in the farmer’s market.

They could be your ticket to video success.

The Impact Of Leadership Vs. Management On The Client/Agency Relationship

2011-11-29T13:08:00.001-08:00

Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2011

By Jason Heller

The client/agency relationship continues to feel the strain from an evolving media ecosystem and a demanding business climate.

Last month I moderated a session at ad:tech titled “The Happy Brand/Agency Marriage.” It was a great discussion of issues that fueled either healthy or dysfunctional relationships. The topics that strained many relationships were consistently tied back to a lack of leadership on either side. I wanted to shed a little more light on this vital point and address the broader topic of leadership vs. management in the context of the client/agency relationship.

Leadership has become such a complex topic, both academically and in practice. It’s a theme that comes up regularly in my work with CMOs, and is always on my mind. If you haven’t read my Online Spin article on “Modern Day Marketing Leadership,” I recommend taking a few minutes to do so.

Leadership vs Management: In Practice

In most organizations, there are those who assume leadership roles and others who assume management roles. It’s generally accepted that finding individuals with exceptional skills in both leadership and management is a rarity.

Leadership: Provides the vision, inspiration, and guidance that allow managers, and their teams, to accomplish the tasks that achieve the goals of the organization.

Management: Ensures that the human, technological and financial resources are being applied optimally to achieve effective workflow and output. Essentially -- executing the vision, managing deadlines and getting things done.

However, navigating the fast-paced and complex world of digital marketing requires individuals in senior management and leadership roles, to a degree, to possess hybrid qualities.

In performing organizational assessments, one of the challenges that we consistently encounter is that companies tend to skew towards one end of the spectrum or another. The lack of one of these core traits will inevitably lead to some degree of breakdown of the client/agency relationship.

Leadership-skewed organizations have great vision but bad execution, including poor communication, limited briefs and processes and a lack of tactical planning required to make the rubber meet the road, so to speak. Leadership-skewed organizations also tend to be under-resourced from this disconnect. It’s like drawing a multi-directional map without realizing the starting point of the journey.

Management-skewed organizations often fail to see the bigger picture and can be penny wise and pound foolish in defending the status quo. This includes a lack of strategic planning, with principals continuing processes and programs because “that’s how things are done around here.” (See “The Most Dangerous Phrase in Marketing”). It’s like navigating with a map that’s missing some new and improved roads.

Up to the Challenge?

Today’s managers and leaders must be passionate about what they do. Digital marketing presents numerous operational challenges for marketers and agencies alike. If either side doesn’t possess or foster in others all of the following traits, which are a mix of management and leadership qualities, expect the relationship to eventually become strained or even fall apart.

Willingness to take complete accountability
Treating partners and staff with respect
Challenging the status quo and inspiring innovation
Improving culture
Maximizing the impact of technology on output
Proactively anticipating and solving problems
Being responsive to consumers and the market
Being responsive to employees
Developing systems, processes, and efficiencies in workflow
Managing multiple projects simultaneously
Doing more with less when necessary
Being available (proverbially) 24/7 in today’s connected world

Of course, most leaders, managers and companies will say that they have all of these characteristics.

It’s funny how similar client/agency relationships are to marriages. Everyone’s out to impress during the dating phase, providing the extra attention and all the little things that make you fall in love. Some marriages see that love and respect last a lifetime.

However, when the attention and care wane over time, marriages get strained. Some bad marriages last for years, while others blow up in nasty divorces. Unfortunately for agencies, there aren’t many client/agency marriage therapists out there. When was the last time you took a deep look at the health of your client/agency relationship?

Let's Get Serious -- Branded Video Is About The Information

2011-11-29T10:48:00.001-08:00

by Alison Provost , Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2011

I came across an interesting statistic the other day. And when I say “interesting,” I don’t mean it in the traditional, “I’m intrigued” sense, but rather in the “what is going on here?” sense. According to a study by the Association of National Advertisers, nearly two-thirds of client-side advertisers (63%) are planning branded entertainment strategies for 2012. The most popular channels for branded entertainment include commercial television, the Internet and sporting events, although Internet strategies are growing at the fastest clip by far, and television is trending downward.

The objectives marketers are trying to achieve with these are what you might expect: making a stronger connection with consumers; aligning the brand with relevant content; and building brand affinity with a desired audience.

But here’s where things get a little funny. And by funny I mean strange, not “hah-hah.” The study notes that while investment in branded entertainment has grown considerably since 2006, marketers haven’t made much headway in measuring the return on their branded entertainment investments.

I’m sorry, but in my experience, it’s been pretty to easy to measure when branded online video pays off. Our online video library for one major food brand, for example, has received more 70 million views via more than 1,500 URLs, making it arguably one of the most successful online video marketing campaigns waged by a big brand to date.

The videos rank an average engagement level of 78 -- and three years after the campaign launch, the videos are still dominating organic search. The ANA survey says that 63% of respondents still find it “challenging” to measure the effect of these branded activities, but I’d say the impact of 70 million views is blatantly obvious.

I think the reason marketers are still finding ROI difficult to measure is because, for the vast majority, the result just aren’t there. They’re not there ibecause most marketers are focused on using online video for branded entertainment. And by and large, branded entertainment has meant repurposing commercials for the Web. I have no issue with the fine work advertisers do. Many of these online commercials and “webisodes” are extremely well done. A lot of them are highly entertaining. But are they what consumers are searching for? Not really.

Our research has shown that consumers are not typing brand names into Google to download commercials to their PCs. They’re searching for information. Through our research for a large electronics company, we learned that consumers weren’t searching for information about how to choose a camera, but were searching for information on how to use one to take pictures of babies, weddings, kids, etc.

That insight was invaluable in crafting our branded online video strategy for the company, which focused on providing consumers with information on how to take the best pictures -- using their brand of cameras, of course -- rather than a commercial about which of their cameras consumers can buy.

The funny thing about branded entertainment -- and by funny, I don’t mean “Roller Babies” -- is that it’s not being searched for online. Consumers aren’t looking to brands for entertainment; they download movies or TV shows for that.

What some major brands have realized is that information is much more valuable to consumers than entertainment, and brands have a huge opportunity to own branded information. Hopefully marketers for other brands are starting to realize that while branded information may not make it to “Tosh.O,” it can do wonders for engagement.

Answering a few of our questions this week is Armie Carabet

2011-11-28T19:01:00.001-08:00

Answering a few of our questions this week is Armie Carabet, the Founder, Director and CEO of ClickN Kids. ClickN Kids creates and offers kid-targeted educational, interactive phonics and spelling programs that are designed for both individual and in-school use. A businessman, Carabet previously was Co-Founder of TyRyMow Affiliated Holdings, and a former partner and Marketing Director of Norman International Inc.

You had been a successful entrepreneur and in 2003 you and Alan Scalone, a software engineer, founded ClickN Kids. The two of you then teamed up with research professor Dr. J. Ron Nelson. At what point did you or the three of you figure out that you wanted to create educational software? (Were there any personal reasons that you went in this direction?)
Our original idea was to open up brick and mortar pre-schools utilizing Dr. Nelson's curriculum. The idea was that we could still offer the type of developmental activities parents expect in preschools. Our idea was to include the added benefit that we knew young children were capable of more and we would expose these fresh young minds to more learning opportunities than most similar facilities.

During this time, the internet came to be revolutionizing so many different ways business was being done. Still in its infancy, we recognized that using the internet would allow us to share Dr. Nelson's instructional design with parents and schools everywhere more cost effectively for both the end user and for us as a business.

After the creation of ClickN READ Phonics in 2004, the challenge was that no one had ever really used online software and most people were still used to buying CD ROM products. Another issue was that most of the country, and the world for that matter, still used dial up to access the internet. We were ahead of our time, but we knew online delivered software was the wave of the future, and from day one, ClickN KIDS was created as an online early learning content development and marketing company.

How did you discover that kids learn to read well when a program/game features known characters?
Dr. Nelson is a nationally recognized research professor who has made his career in researching and understanding how children learn. As one of the leading experts in this field, Dr. Nelson is an expert in instructional design. He has also aligned his work with the national standards, as well as the core curriculums used in schools, thus allowing our programs to be adopted in all US schools.

That said, there is no secret that if you make things fun and interactive, people of all ages will be more engaged by the project. In our case, using fun for teaching is nothing new. We proved for years that our lesser known cartoon characters were very effective in teaching reading. There was no doubt in our minds that the use of world famous characters that parents and kids both love, would make a very successful recipe for a teaching tool. We were right!

How difficult was it to convince Warner Bros. to enter into a licensing deal to feature their famous Looney Tunes characters in ClickN Kids? I mean, do you just pick the phone and say "hey we've got this great program and the Tasmanian Devil would be a perfect fit?"
My wife has been in the licensing business for over 20 years. As such, I was familiar with the industry. Further, it turned out, through her many years in that business, a close friend of hers had recently been hired by Warner Bros. to facilitate new business initiatives. As a result of this relationship, we were introduced to the publishing division of Warner Bros. Consumer Products where they took an immediate interest in ClickN KIDS. So, in a sense, it all started with a simple phone call, but in reality, it was very complex. That said, it took seventeen months from our first meeting with Warner Bros. until we consummated our deal for the rights to use their properties within our online educational software.

What was it like working with such a classic property as the Looney Tunes? Fans can be so critical of adaptations and other uses of famous properties, particularly in animation. How did you and Warner Bros. put the right team together to come out with the product we see today?
First of all, I grew up as a HUGE fan of Looney Tunes. Having watched them all the time, I was no doubt emotional about the characters to begin with. For years even before working with Warner Bros., I had an animation cell of Bugs, Daffy, Tweety and the gang hanging above my desk. Perhaps it was meant to be and I just didn't know it at the time.

Not only were we granted the rare opportunity to be a Looney Tunes licensee, but we were now going to build brand new, never before seen Looney Tunes cartoons. A tremendous honor to say the least.

Another very exciting piece is that we created a brand new character that interacts with the Looney Tunes characters. His name is Professor Wizbot. He is a really cute robot character that is the onscreen teacher who actually delivers all of the lessons. The icing on the cake, at least for me, is that since I do the voice of Professor Wizbot, it's almost like I get to be in a Looney Tunes cartoon with my childhood favorites... how cool is that!

As you can imagine, creating new cartoons with such iconic figures as the Looney Tunes created quite a challenge. We literally started from scratch as Warner Bros. did not have adequate content that had been created specifically for use online. After hiring a writer who had extensive Looney Tunes experience, we came up with the premises for scripts, then wrote the scripts, hired the approved voice talent, recorded and edited all voice work. Simultaneously, we created storyboards, created all the new animation libraries, drew new backgrounds and props and then turned all of that into a series of 5-7 minute episodes that exist only within our program. Furthermore, we also did the sound effects and musical compositions making this a full production environment.

Accomplishing all this could not have happened without having extraordinary talent. We have been blessed with amazing talent at all levels. From our Project Manager, to our Animation Director, to our animators, writers, designers, artists and composers, we are so lucky to have some of the best talent available today.

With tremendous support and guidance from Warner Bros. we were able to create a series of new Looney Tunes cartoons that stay true to their roots. Not only are the graphics exactly the way the customer would expect, the story lines and character personalities are all carefully preserved. Warner Bros. is very particular about the use of these characters and would not let us go to market if we strayed from the classic Looney Tunes look and feel.

Where does Prof. Wizbot come from? Do you plan to develop him into other arenas like a TV series or webisodes?
Professor Wizbot came to life out of necessity. When speaking with Warner Bros. about our program, we shared with them that due to all of the Looney Tunes characters having some sort of speech challenge, i.e. a lisp, rolling "r"s, accent from the Bronx etc., none of those characters could teach phonics. Additionally Warner Bros. did not want any of the Looney Tunes to be anything other than themselves. That being the case, we told Warner Bros. that we needed to be able to create a new character to act as the onscreen teacher.

Knowing we could not possibly create another animal character that was capable of sharing the stage with the Looney Tunes, the idea of a robot came to be. After dozens of ideas for names, he became Professor Wizbot.

We do plan to make Professor Wizbot of celebrity of sorts and leveraging his success into a children's TV show and or educational products is very realistic.

Right now you offer an online subscription service for in school and at home use. What are the plans for e-books, apps and/or electronic toys and video games?
Looney Tunes Phonics currently works on all hardware that uses the Droid operating system allowing the programs to be used on millions of tablets and smart phones already. We are finishing up the testing phase now for our iPad version, which we hope to announce very shortly. Creating story reading exercises tied to our curriculums is also a project of ours. Not only will these stories be complimentary to the programs we sell, but will also be designed as stand alones for use as e-books as well as traditional books.

As an online content developer, we are not in the toy business and have no plans to create hard goods of that sort. We do not get involved in manufacturing or inventory. However, we are in discussions with partners on ways to utilize our unique teaching tools and incorporate them into existing toys and retail distribution channels.

Can you tell us how many school systems and/or individual schools are actively using the ClickN products?
Company policy does not allow for me to disclose actual numbers, but it is safe to say that hundreds of thousands of users remain active in our system with a large percentage used in school environments. Additionally, we recently signed a distribution contract with a firm that will represent our programs to more than 2,200 school districts they currently sell their products to. We expect this will significantly increase our school wide presence in North America.

Platform Positioning As A New Communications Norm

2011-11-23T13:57:00.001-08:00

by Ryan DeShazer , Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2011

I’ve been thinking a lot about platforms lately -- and it seems as though the Web’s largest technology firms have been thinking a lot about them too.

Platforms are brand ecosystems: hardware that works best with complementary pieces from the same manufacturer; distributed software that inter-operate with one another, but not across competing platforms. Platforms represent a very popular, emerging positioning strategy that sits neatly at the intersection of branding and demand generation. Successful platforms are able to drive more revenue and instill greater brand affinity. And when a consumer first embraces a platform, it becomes much easier for that person to go “all in.”

Perhaps it’s the holiday shopping season that has helped to heighten my awareness of platforms recently. I’ve found myself asking questions like “Would a Kindle owner want an iBook gift card?” and “Would this new Android phone play nice with an Apple TV?” Gift giving this year is a much more considered process than in years past, all thanks to the emergence of digital platforms.

Self-Identification through Platform Alignment
I was reminded of the power of platform positioning just this past week. With news that many retailers were slashing prices of Research in Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook tablet (from $499 to $199 for the 16GB model), I decided to pick one up. I’m a sucker for gadgets, and regard myself as a technology aficionado, so this wasn’t exactly atypical behavior for me.

I brought the tablet in to work to show it off to colleagues and was surprised by much of the response.

The Apple fans in the office mocked the device (and me indirectly):

“Why would you buy that?”

“$200 is a lot of money to spend on a paperweight!”

“Do you need a string and an empty can to do video chat?”

Keep in mind that none of these detractors (jokers) had ever seen or used the device they were mocking. It was 100% pure Apple bias.

They’ve gone all in. Being Apple fans has become part of their identities.

Many Points of Entry, One End Result
Examples like those are intentional outcomes. That type of behavior is exactly what these big-time tech firms are encouraging.

On the topic of platform positioning, Google chairman Eric Schmidt recently made this observation: “It seems to me that there are four companies that are exploiting platform strategies really well.” Those four companies are Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and (of course) Google.

I think we should expect other industries to follow the lead of these pioneers.

The brilliance of the platform model is in its reach. In the case of Apple, there are many points of entry into the ecosystem. For example, if I buy an iPod, I’m almost guaranteed to purchase music from the iTunes Store. After I’ve purchased a few albums, I realize that I can only play those songs on Apple devices or through the iTunes desktop application. If I then decide to purchase a smartphone, the logical choice is the Apple iPhone -- it plays all my music right out of the box.

The model encourages an incremental investment in the platform. It’s easier for me to purchase another song from iTunes than it is to set up a Google account and buy a song through the Android music store.

It’s easier for me too to go all in.

Successful Platform Positioning and its Impact on Search Marketing
Admittedly, this macro-level brand and positioning strategy may not be immediately connected to search marketing. But it could (and eventually will) be.

A long-standing tactic that my team and I have employed is bidding on competitor brand keyword terms. When a user turns to Google and performs a search for a competitor’s brand name, we serve an ad that speaks directly to our areas of competitive distinction. Don’t go with Brand X, we’re better suited to your needs.

But what happens when that user is already locked in to my competitor’s platform ecosystem? It doesn’t matter how compelling my marketing programs are, I’m not likely to win that battle.

Overall, if we begin to see a rise in platform strategies, it could shift the balance of power to a select few online players. It would minimize the online fact-finding process, as brand-term-focused keyword searches rise. The resultant brand affinity will also tip the SEO scales to those select winners.
I think we’re witnessing the emergence of a new communications norm. Challenger brands (and my BlackBerry Playbook), beware.

New IAB Guidelines Bring More Transparency To Video Advertising

2011-11-23T10:07:00.001-08:00

by Tim Avila , Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2011

Be honest. How much do you really know about the video ads you buy? The term “pre-roll” frequently gets thrown around as a shorthand quality measure, but by definition it only describes a video ad’s position relative to content. Do you know if that pre-roll you’ve bought is being shown above the fold, or whether it was auto-initiated?

Fortunately, the IAB recently ratified the first Quality Assurance Guidelines for video advertising. These new guidelines provide publishers, networks and advertisers standard language to more precisely specify advertising inventory. In general these guidelines define various characteristics of video ads:

Ad Type: How the ad is displayed, particularly in relation to content.
Ad Position: is the ad above or below the “fold”?
Content Type: The context in which the ad is shown (e.g. video, music, gaming).
Duration: The maximum duration of the ad.
Auto-Play: Defines whether the user initiated the content/ad experience or whether it was started on its own.
Video Context: If available, the context of the video content being shown before, during or after the ad.
Embeddable Player: Will the ad be shown in players that can be embedded on other sites?
Device Type: The type of device on which the ad is consumed.

What does this mean for advertisers?
These clearer definitions of video ads give buyers more confidence, reducing friction in the marketplace. These classifications allow advertisers to specify video ads in RFPs and insertion orders -- and to differentiate prices they are willing to pay. For example, advertisers who buy from IAB-certified partners can specify that their pre-roll ad be user-initiated and displayed above the fold. They can also stipulate different prices they are willing to pay for ads with varying characteristics. For programmatic buyers, this creates a common and meaningful set of ad characteristics on which to base bids.

Several networks, exchanges and publishers, including BrightRoll, AdapTV and DBG, are already working on adopting these guidelines, and all QAG-certified companies will be required to support them by April 2012. Advertisers should begin familiarizing themselves with the guidelines and referring to them in their RFPs and insertion orders. Once adopted, these guidelines, along with ad format and ad serving standards, will provide advertisers access to high quality video inventory with transparency and control. Kudos to the IAB and all of the companies who participated in this effort.

Answering a few of our questions this week is Dick Rothkopf

2011-11-21T07:38:00.001-08:00

Answering a few of our questions this week is Dick Rothkopf, a founding partner and Chairman of Ludorum, a creator and producer of kid-targeted franchises, including the preschool TV series, Chuggington. Dick has toiled in the toy and kid's entertainment for many years, and was also the co-founder of the toy company, Learning Curve Brands, where he served as Executive Chairman from 1993 until its acquisition by RC2 Corporation in 2003. In addition to early childhood education toys and programs, Dick currently sits on the Board of the Colorado-based Youth Foundation; an organization that provides programs that serves economically disadvantaged kids from preschool through college. He is also past chairman, and continues as an active board member, of the Ounce of Prevention Fund, a Chicago-based not-for-profit organization that aims to help close the kindergarten achievement gap.

For many years you were in the toy business. What lessons from that business did you carry into Ludorum, which produces and distributes shows for kids?
I'd have to say the biggest lesson learned from my years in toys was that we must serve both sides of a dual market: children of course, who have to love the playing, and moms and dads who have to love what they perceive the property is doing for their child.

You have a long history of interest and involvement in education. What caused you to become interested in childhood education? Were you a good student?
I was a very bad student. The best you could say would be "a late bloomer." But, I had parents who expected a lot of me, and eventually, I came around and decided to try to make a success of myself. I realized while our company was trying to help teen kids from our fairly rough office neighborhood that children especially those not lucky to be born to educated, middle class parents, simply did not expect to succeed. Nor did their parents expect them to. I am convinced and committed that a key to improving education in our country is to work with low-income families during the first five years of a child's life. If our children can get a quality preschool education then, their self-expectation soars, as does the expectations their parents have of them. From there, the road to success is still not easy, but it is at least navigable.

By the way, what does Ludorum mean?
No idea. I'm told by my partners it means "to play" in some form of Greek, and maybe it does.

Chuggington is now seen in 175 countries (in 26 languages), why do you think that kids (boys and girls) are so attracted to talking trains?
Whether a child is a boy or a girl or speaks French, Spanish or Chinese, we know that they probably love trains. Kids just do and have since steam engines. With Chuggington, we use high quality CGI-animation, fast-paced stories and strong male and female leads to appeal to all of our preschool viewers. Now, we have a strong global market with ratings at or near the top of the scale, and girls make up nearly half of our viewers.

When creating an episode of Chuggington, how does your team determine the balance between education and entertainment?
For parents, the episodes are nonviolent, non-threatening and each one contains a little life lesson they can talk to their children about. But, entertainment is at the heart of Chuggington, and we try to strike a happy balance between learning and adventure, keeping it, above all, fun for both parent and child. For example, in Snowstruck Wilson (which premieres in December on Disney Junior), Wilson gets stuck in a blizzard because he gets distracted and ends up trapped in a tunnel. In the end, Wilson escapes with the help of Action Chugger and Harrison (so exciting!) and our little fans learn how important it is to pay attention.

What is next new project for Ludorum that you are most excited about?
I guess you could say the "next" project has already begun. In September of this year, Ludorum partnered with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to launch a new traffic safety campaign "Think Safe, Ride Safe, Be Safe!" Using Chuggington's colorful and engaging characters, the campaign provides important child transportation safety information to families with young children, including bike, pedestrian, car seat and school bus safety guidance. One cornerstone of the campaign is the traffic safety pledge, which more than 120,000 children have taken since September. You can learn more (and take the traffic safety pledge!) at www.chuggington.com/safety. We, together with our friends at Disney Junior and NHTSA, plan to reach millions of parents and children, and to save lives with this long-term campaign.

What was your favorite toy as a kid? Do you still have that toy?
I was a model rocketry nerd. Nearly blew the roof of the school when I was in the fifth grade. No kidding. They didn't like me much there after that.

Your Email To-Do List For 2012

2011-11-17T09:36:00.001-08:00

by Loren McDonald, Thursday, Nov. 17, 2011

It's that time of year for articles predicting marketing trends for 2012. For this column, however, I'm taking a different approach and outlining several tactics that should be on your 2012 to-do list.

Some of these are tactics that will help you keep up with your competitors, while others could move you ahead of the pack. All are designed to help you deliver a more effective email program -- and, ultimately, achieve your business goals.

List Growth/Data Capture

Investigate new options and channels that help you acquire more new subscribers and associated data you can use to fine-tune your messages, such as the following:
Location-based opt-ins using social programs like Foursquare, in-store tablets or kiosks and QR codes on store signage.
Opting in via SMS text message.
Social sign-in (subscribers opt in quickly via a social network without filling out innumerable data fields).
Progressive forms that gather data gradually over a series of prompting emails.
Optimized preference centers that enable more sophisticated targeting based on demographics and interests.

Deliverability

Use seed lists or a third-party service to learn your inbox placement rate, not just how many emails didn't get lost to hard bounces and spam traps.
Discover what's driving spam complaints and deliverability issues and which problems you can control, such as address acquisition source/methods; data hygiene practices; frequency or content.

Design/Content/Frequency

Redesign your emails to be mobile- and touch-friendly:

o      Use scalable emails that adjust the content size as the screen grows or shrinks.
o      Redesign navigation, links and CTA image buttons to be clicked easily even by "fat fingers."
o      Add mobile versions of emails and landing pages.

Test and optimize landing and Web pages to maximize conversion from your email traffic.
Design/redesign email messages to make them shareworthy: easier to share with content that subscribers want to share.
Add more personality and "voice" to your messages, such as content by employees, subscribers, customers or other stakeholders.
Design certain email messages to do more than sell -- also educate, inform, intrigue, entertain and engage.
Leverage your investment in other Web/marketing technologies such as recommendation engines or product review management software and add that content to email messages through dynamic content.
Test different cadences to find which works best with different engagement levels of subscribers.

Automation and Segmentation

Launch or tweak a pre-purchase program based on customer behavior, such as browsing or cart-abandonment/remarketing.
Launch or tweak a post-purchase program including surveys, purchase anniversary, bounceback, product replacement, reviews or ratings.
Launch or improve transactional emails with better design or dynamic content that incorporates cross-selling, upselling, reviews or other UGC.
Leverage Web and purchase behavior to implement track-based nurture programs.
Finally implement that birthday email program because you've been capturing birth date for a few years.
Automate where possible, sending emails to individuals based on time zone/location or previous engagement times.

Reducing List Churn/Inactivity

Upgrade from a one-size-fits-all single welcome email to a multi-email "onboarding" program that leverages Web behavior and demographic and interest data.
Move to early activation rather than waiting until well after subscribers have gone inactive.
Add an "opt-out alternatives" preference center that enables choice of frequency and address/channel/content changes or even to pause emails for a defined period.

Measurement

Move beyond process metrics (open and click rates, bounces, unsubscribes and spam complaints) to measure business-driven metrics such as cost reduction, impact on retention, revenue per email or brand value.
Analyze results by segment, demographic, buyer versus non-buyer, domain, etc., to provide insight for future strategies and programs.

How many of the above have you already knocked off your list? If very few, don't fret, but start by prioritizing your to-dos through a balance of those that deliver the highest ROI and those that increase results but only require a modest level of effort().

What have I missed? What's on your to-do list for 2012?

Until next time, take it up a notch!

Be Smart, Be Social

2011-11-16T13:52:00.001-08:00

by Jeremiah McMillan , Wednesday, Nov. 16, 2011

As “content everywhere” business models continue to expand at a rapid pace, it becomes abundantly clear what the devices and platforms defining and driving TV and digital entertainment contents convergence are.

With convergence, content providers and producers need to know and have survival skills to compete in “content everywhere” markets -- including what the revenue, brand and digital extensions mean to the bottom line.

A few market shifts are painting a much clearer picture. Understanding “smart” platforms and devices, and what defines “social TV” content engagement, especially for the younger generations, is crucial to content business models in a “content everywhere” world.
Basically, multi-screen content strategy for 2012 and beyond is all about being “smart” and being “social.”

This is clear from the attention on a few new research studies that show global online TV and video revenues hitting $22 billion by 2016, up from $3.4 billion in 2010.
U.S. executives can look at with anticipation, or concern at the prediction that the U.S.’s share of that market will drop from 54% to 36% as the “globalization of content” and how people receive it takes off, with connected devices and platforms in Europe and Asia driving the growth in on-line video and TV revenues more than any other.

Smart And Social Digital Extensions:
Digital and traditional TV viewing and distribution platforms are converging.
Indicators show that smart, internet-connected TVs, devices and tablets, and most importantly OTT (over-the-top TV) are becoming the major viewing points for digital entertainment on digital platforms. The real digital and online video revolution has arrived, marrying content development with digital brand strategy across platforms.

With digital content extensions, we know now that if you build it, most likely an audience will be there waiting to engage and embrace it. -- with new devices driving entry to complementary entertainment and TV content in games, video, and social, with direct interactivity across platforms.

Being smart and social, from a content producers’ perspective, now has more meaning than ever. It is about approaching content development with digital extensions such as a social or causal game, or micro-sites that push social engagement. A “second screen” strategy knows that TV needs to be more interactive and social and that a majority of the audience views TV while also on mobile, smart devices, and tablets at the same time. The opportunity, and challenge, lies both before and after TV viewing takes place.

Being “smart” is about TV content for Internet-connected TVs and devices that can and most likely have complementary social TV & game extensions, embracing second-screen TV development at every juncture.

Developing “Social TV” applications and extensions, or content that has a social strategy with entry points, triggers, and enticer’s for content engagement drives audience to the content. Creating content that embraces social is all about getting the audience interested. The challenge is making them care about the entertainment to engage with it.

The Future Of Content: Customization And Personalization
Creative ideas transcend platforms. New platforms and the digital extensions that encompass them create new revenue opportunities.

Social TV, “second screen” interactivity & engagement through social & casual game extensions are a gateway to ancillary platform revenues.

Disruptive technologies such as content recommendation, check-in social apps, and many other social, digital & casual game technologies let the audience customize and personalize their content viewing and engagement.

New content technologies and the digital extensions created for and by them drive engagement. They also help build awareness pre-launch of an anticipated new TV or on-line series, or companion TV tie-in.
Audiences want the opportunity to share with their friends what they are watching, recommend the programs they like, and share their personal experience across digital platforms customized to their liking.

Content producers and providers need to develop for where content is going. With the right mix of smart and social, you can’t go wrong.

CMO to Agency - I Want Video that is Measurable, Successful and Totally Original! Stat!

2011-11-16T11:48:00.001-08:00

by Daisy Whitney, Wednesday, November 16, 2011 11:32 AM

Digitas has been one of the most progressive agencies working in online video via its Third Act division and regularly executes successful online video campaigns, such as those for Kraft, Starburst and Holiday Inn Express.

So when Digitas executive Dave Marsey, senior vice president and group media director, spoke during a Beet.TV online video Webcast this week about what makes online video campaigns work, my ears perked up.

For starters, Marsey said agencies must work first to understand what the customer is thinking, how they consume various channels of content, and how they watch linear video versus streaming video.
The next step is to identify the desired actions a brand wants to elicit in an online video campaign. “If you are a CPG brand, it may be printing out a recipe. If you are a travel company it may be researching a hotel. We try to measure the activities our clients want and then correlate to sales,” Marsey said during the Webcast.

The brand’s goals could be encouraging viewers to watch a video, to engage with the video, to like a Facebook page or to share a video. Marsey pointed to the recent Kraft “Real Women of Philadelphia ” video series that drove high engagement with its videos and social campaign, and as a result bumped sales of the product by 5%.

So if online video can drive that kind of sales jump, why don’t more marketers spend more money in the medium, asked Jason Krebs, Chief Media Officer for Tremor Video, who interviewed Marsey during the Webcast.

Less accountable mediums like TV still deliver a big audience so they’re not going away. Nor are marketers stealing dollars away from TV to plunk into online video. Instead, marketers are aiming to amplify their paid media spending with more earned media, Marsey said. That’s why social media has become so vital to any online video buy, because a share on Facebook is free and lets consumers do the heavy lifting.

While online video spending is growing by about 50% this year, CMOs still expect brands and agencies to bring them highly measurable ideas that are category exclusive and haven’t been done before.
Piece of cake, right?

“You have to instill confidence in the CMO that you have done everything you can and that there is a reasonable chance of success,” Marsey said.

Video is Evolving -- Don't Get Left Behind

2011-11-15T17:15:00.001-08:00

by Craig Wax , Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2011

Consumer usage of video is increasing at an astonishing rate. Cisco has estimated that video will increase from 30% of Internet traffic in 2010 to 90% by 2013. Online retailers are already using video, and service companies, manufacturing, and many others are also hopping on board. The scope of businesses that employ video and the different uses for video are expanding.

The message is clear: Consumers expect online video as a central element of a company’s communications strategy. No matter what sector of business you are in, incorporating video is an essential step in preparing yourself for the future of marketing.

73% of online retailers use video on product pages, which means that if you’re a retailer and you don’t have video on your site, you are officially in the minority, according to eMarketer. Other sectors of business are beginning to follow suit. A recent survey by Industrial Marketing Today found that 50% of B2B manufacturers use YouTube as a channel to connect with their customers. Even service companies such as Charles Schwab are starting to include videos on their websites.

Video can be used in various ways, which explains why more companies are using video to achieve business objectives. It is clearly beneficial for online retailers to demonstrate a product to their consumers.

But what about answering potential questions about your company through video on a FAQ page? This way, you can efficiently inform your customer with a personal touch. Dell credits video with reducing service call volumes by 5%, and Virgin Mobile expects video to reduce call volumes by 14% in 2011(The Australian, December 2010).

Promotional videos can be placed on a landing page to endorse new products and services. Background video on a Web site can make the page feel interactive and exciting. The list of possibilities goes on. Companies are using video on more platforms as well. YouTube is a common channel that companies use, and it is the second most popular web site with 790 million unique monthly visitors, per ReelSEO. Other social media tools, such as Facebook and Twitter, integrate video into their systems and make it easier than ever for users to share videos with each other.

The use of video in emails is gaining in popularity and has been shown to increase click-through rates by over 96%, in an Implix survey. Newsletters or other subscriber-based system could benefit from video, too. Video is even extending beyond the computer, to mobile phone apps or at on-site locations.

Imagine going to a restaurant, using your phone to scan a QR code next to a menu item, and watching a clip on what the dish looks like and how it is made. This is just one example on how video can be employed inthe hospitality industry.

Increasing consumption of video makes it clear that consumers prefer to take information in as video over other forms of content. That’s true no matter what business you may be in. Companies that respond by deploying video more broadly will be speaking in their customers’ preferred language.

Video's Time Has Come

2011-11-14T17:50:00.001-08:00

by Rob Manoff , Friday, Nov. 4, 2011

For those of us who live and breathe online video advertising, it’s been really interesting to see which advertisers and industry sectors have been fastest to include the channel in their media plans. The recent annoucement from Yahoo and ABC News may be just the kick in the pants more cautious advertisers need to really believe the potential of digital video.

The partnership combines a news network’s global newsgathering organization with the reach of a portal, putting ABC News’ rich content in front of more than 100 million users every month. It’s the latest salvo in the war on online media, and it spells opportunity for everyone.

For Advertisers: In essence, the expansion of online content via video should create more and higher-value inventory. Today, one of the biggest problems with online video is the challenge to find and buy preferred inventory. Deals like this provide advertisers with a proven vehicle to tap preferred, premium inventory to generate more audience views.

For Agencies: Just the fact that there’s more quality inventory available gives agencies more runway to be aggressive and creative with their digital ad buys. In the case of ABC News/Yahoo News, they’ve now got a well-known portal with great content. Agencies can run new video formats or create new ways to sponsor video and to display new, exciting advertising content.

Video metrics are also gaining validity. YouTube, for example, is now being tracked by comScore, giving media buyers real data to factor in to purchasing decisions. They’ve now got the tools to convince brands that they need to be transitioning TV dollars online.

For Publishers: Major publishers that are also content creators like National Geographic or USA Today now have a great example to demonstrate the value of video content to potential advertisers. This partnership opens the door for publishers to realize the value of their video content through similar deals that allow them to leverage existing digital advertising networks to grow their brands.

Users aren’t going to just one destination to view and watch video. They’re expecting to see it wherever they go, on whatever site they’re on. Video has become a companion to whatever they’re reading. As a content creator, you need consumers to be able to view your content across a number of venues, not just your own site.

Is the Online Advertising Market About To Boom Or Bust?

2011-11-14T17:37:00.001-08:00

by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan , Monday, Nov. 14, 2011

Raise your hand if you’re confused about the number of “market leaders” in the industry now. Everywhere you look, someone is claiming to be better than the rest, but the truth is: “There can't be six or seven category leaders,” argues Will Margiloff, chief executive officer of Ignition One, the digital marketing technology unit of Japanese ad agency Dentsu, adding: “it's just not a big enough market for all the money invested.”

The Only Valuation That Matters
A wise man told me this past week that the only price that matters is what someone will pay for your company when you actually sell. Right now, the online advertising and video market is full of way too many similar companies with a) complicated capitalization tables, b) excessive funding histories and c) no real differentiation from one another. Even the content sub-category -- which I think is the only one that has been “under-invested,” relatively speaking, in this landscape -- has way too many companies that fit that description.

The main problem, continues Margiloff, is that some of these companies frequently have more money invested in them than their revenue potential. I’ll add that most of the heavily funded companies have models that scale quickly but lack any true differentiation, defensibility or uniqueness. I see a lot of companies set up to grow rapidly with little longevity baked in them.

This means that even though their valuations can grow quickly in a revenue-based valuation model using a price-to-sales ratio, they tend to fall just as quickly. I’ve covered valuations previously, but the main thing that drives value in the end is how many people want to buy a company at a given time, and what I am seeing is most companies are not differentiated enough to matter.

Thankfully for them, most have revenues or the means to change their disposition in the meantime. And yes, to some extent, most of the companies with the biggest war chests are looking at content in one way or another, but that’s not a given, let alone a slam dunk for all.

The Current Backdrop
Today, most private mid-to-large companies in online media and advertising are valued at 3 times revenue, but as recently as 2007 Yahoo bought Right Media for 10 times revenue while Google scooped up Doubleclick for 15 times sales. Yes, that was before the 2008-09 meltdown, but the fact was, at the time, those companies had a greater level of differentiation than their peer group does today.

Today’s darlings remain the ad exchanges: Razorfish has sharply reduced the number of publishers it works with directly, from 1,832 in 2007 to 598 in 2010. Meanwhile, it has doubled spending on the exchanges, which have emerged as the talk of the town as advertisers are more spending to them.

Media is Cyclical -- Yes, Even Online Media
But we’ve seen this history before, both in the industry and outside of it. Within the advertising market, we have seen ad networks, behavioral targeting firms etc. all come and gone. Today they face multiple risks:

- Display ad networks are losing budgets to video: 43% of video budgets will come at the expense of display , and less than 40% will come from TV buys.

- Behavioral targeting firms face increasing risks over privacy concerns.

The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth, After the Quants Shall Have Destroyed It
Outside of it, the quants were running Wall Street not long ago, and investors thought the sky was the limit. But before long, hubris and greed mixed a lethal cocktail that brought havoc to the entire economy.

And for all of the talk that “TV is dead,” it’s not, and it won’t be. Yes, online will grow at the expense of TV, but the obituary of television can be shelved.

Consolidation Might be The Answer, But We’ve Been Saying this For Years Now
The bottom line is that you need to string together a barrage of online video, advertising and/or content companies to start to woo mainstream marketers who are content with spending their budgets on TV. To do that, you need companies that don’t have outsized valuations or too much funding in them. That has held up this long-awaited consolidation.

Everywhere you look, I would advise caution and pragmatism over irrational exuberance. Another wise man once said: “You never know who is swimming naked until the tide goes out.” It’s easy to want to go long and reach for scale, but scale for scale’s sake is futile and a recipe for failure.

A Snapshot: How Broadcast Networks Are Handling Online & Cable VOD Commercial Loads

2011-11-11T20:01:00.001-08:00

by John R. Osborn , Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011

This week I took a “snapshot” of how TV broadcast networks are commercializing their content for two different platforms of digital delivery: 1) Online (via Hulu) and 2) cable-system-delivered Video-On-Demand (VOD) (via Time-Warner Cable in Brooklyn, N.Y.).

I selected a single prime-time, half-hour comedy program from each network that ran in the last 10 days on both platforms. My measurements focus on ads in a traditional form, whether it is a purchased ad or a promo for a same/sister-network program. Here’s what I found:

ABC: “Happy Endings” from 11/2/11

Cable VOD: Total length stated is 25:00 minutes; Fast Forwarding disabled for entire program.

Total commercial pods: 4

Total commercial time: 3:30 minutes

Pod 1: 1:00 (2x :30); Pod 2: 1:00 (2x :30); Pod 3: 1:00 (2x :30); Pod 4: 0:30

(1x :30)

Hulu: Total length stated is 21:35 minutes; Fast Forwarding disabled for commercials only.

Total commercial pods: 3

Total commercial time: 2:30 minutes

Pod 1: 1:00 (0:45 + 0:15); Pod 2: 0:30 (1x :30); Pod 3: 1:00 (0:30+0:30)

CBS: "Two and a Half Men" from 10/31/11

Cable VOD: Total length stated is 21:00 minutes; Fast Forwarding is functional.

Total commercial pods: 3

Total commercial time: 1:30 minutes

Pod 1: 0:30 (1x :30); Pod 2: 0:30 (1x :30); Pod 3: 0:30 (1x :30)

Hulu: Total length stated is 19:28 minutes; Fast Forwarding disabled for commercials.

Total commercial pods: 4

Total commercial time: 4:00 minutes

Pod 1: 0:30 (1x 0:30) lead-in ad; Pod 2: 2:00 (1x 1:30 [RX Drug with button to online Product Info window] + :30); Pod 3: 0:30 (1x :30); Pod 4: 1:00 (2x :30)

FOX: "The Simpsons" from 10/30/11

Cable VOD: Total length stated is 30:00 minutes; Fast Forwarding disabled for entire program.

Total commercial pods: 3

Total commercial time: 8:00 minutes

Pod 1: 2:30 (1x :60 + 3x :30); Pod 2: 2:30 (5x :30); Pod 3: 3:00 (1x :60 + 4x :30)

Hulu: Total length stated is 22:01 minutes; Fast Forwarding disabled for commercials.

Total commercial pods: 4

Total commercial time: 3:50 minutes

Pod 1: 0:20 (1x 0:20) lead-in ad – brought to you with limited commercial interruption; Pod 2: 1:15 (0:30 + 0:30 + 0:15); Pod 3: 1:00 (0:15 + 0:30 + 0:15); Pod 4: 1:15 (0:15 + 0:30 + 0:30)

NBC: “Whitney” from 11/3/11

Cable VOD: Total length stated is 22:00 minutes; Fast Forwarding disabled for entire program.

Total commercial pods: 5

Total commercial time: 1:45 minutes

Pod 1: 0:30 (1x 0:30); Pod 2: 0:15 (1x 0:15); Pod 3: 0:15 (1x 0:15); Pod 4: 0:30 (1x 0:30); Pod 5: 0:15 (1x 0:15)

Hulu: Total length stated is 21:26 minutes; Fast Forwarding disabled for commercials.

Total commercial pods: 3

Total commercial time: 2:15 minutes

Pod 1: 1:10 (0:40 + 0:30) lead-in ad – brought to you with limited commercial interruption; Pod 2: 0:45 (0:30 + 0:15); Pod 3: 0:45 (0:15 + 0:30); Pod 4: 0:45 (0:15 + 0:30)

Top Line Observations

ABC: Ran more ad time on cable VOD than it did on Hulu, but had some unused ad slots on Hulu. Had less commercial pods on Hulu for a similar amount of ad time. Disables fast forwarding wherever possible.

CBS: Ran the least amount of ads for any of the networks on cable VOD, yet ran the most on Hulu (beating FOX by 0:10). The only network not to disable fast forwarding on cable VOD. And the only network not a co-owner of Hulu.

FOX: Ran more ads on cable VOD than any network (at 8:00 minutes more than double the next closest), and more than double its own commercial load on Hulu. Disables fast forwarding wherever possible.

NBC: Ran more total ad time on Hulu than on cable VOD, though it scheduled more “pods” on cable VOD. Had the unique approach of running only one unit -- a single :15 (three times) or a :30 (twice)] per commercial “pod” on cable VOD -- making NBC the smallest per-pod and smallest total ad loader of all 4 networks. Disables fast forwarding wherever possible.

Hulu vs. Cable VOD: I noticed that the total program time shown on Hulu does not include commercials, while the time of program shown on cable VOD, does. Also note that sometimes Hulu states a break has 3 ads, but only runs 1 or 2.

What it Means

Consumer Recognition: All 4 networks are recognizing that online and cable VOD consumers are not going to tolerate the kinds of commercial loads found on linear television (where they can avoid ads easily) because they are used to far fewer and less-lengthy interruptions for Internet-delivered content. This means higher CPMs for advertisers down the road, yet it may produce greater value for advertisers, with greater assurance of actual impressions delivered.

Replacing the DVR?: With the exception of CBS for cable VOD, the networks are trying to “take back” the ability to skip commercials by forcing full-commercial -- and in some cases, full-program -- viewing as an only option. If the DVR is a transitional technology to VOD, will high-paying customers of cable companies stand for having this convenience removed partly or entirely?

It's also noteworthy that Hulu doesn’t do an “all or nothing” disabling of fast forwarding. While there are no traditional “VCR-style” buttons, you can move back and forth within the program by placing an arrow on the timeline bar at the bottom. Ad breaks are shown on this bar; however in the commercial pods, skipping or fast forwarding is not allowed.

The Emergence of Time-Counters: Hulu has created a very sophisticated system of time counters to let viewers know how much time they will be investing, both in the total program, and when commercials come up, in that break. This idea, taken from online “pre-rolls,” will help consumers accept that ads help pay for content. There is some lack of transparency in the lack of clarity for total time on Hulu: does it include commercials or not? This will need to be addressed for consumer confidence. The cable VOD systems will need similar time-counting capabilities to keep up.

Testing & Trials: The different approaches to length and frequency of commercial pods show that the networks are trying many different ways to monetize through advertising. Fast-forwarding functionality is an area where there is testing and learning happening. This all begs the question, what criteria are the decision-makers using to determine success: consumer satisfaction, revenue optimization, or a hybrid?

Count On Mom Bloggers For Social and Environmental Support, And Votes

2011-11-11T20:00:00.001-08:00

Count On Mom Bloggers For Social and Environmental Support, And Votes

According to a new study from Scarborough Research, Mom Bloggers’ social and political influence reach far beyond the confines of the playground (Women with at least one child in their household and have read or contributed to a blog in the past 30 days. They make up 14% of all American moms.) The study shows that Mom Bloggers are much more politically involved and socially mindful than their non-blogging counterparts, and are more than twice as likely as all mothers to have contributed to a political organization in the past twelve month

76% of Mom Bloggers assert that they “always” vote in presidential elections, while 45% “always” vote in state elections. In terms of party identification:

29% of Mom Bloggers self-identify as Democrat
25% as Republican
29% as Independent.
12%Independent but closer to Democrat
9%Independent but closer to Republican

While no single political party unifies Mom Bloggers, the Study shows that they find consensus via cultural and environmental issues. They are more than twice as likely as all moms to have contributed to an arts/cultural organization. Additionally, Mom Bloggers are:

75% more likely to have contributed to a social care/welfare organization
64% more likely to have contributed to an environmental organization
85% more likely than all mothers to support a politician based on environmental issues
38% more likely to have done volunteer work in the past year

Deirdre McFarland, vice president of marketing and communications, Scarborough Research, notes that “...as politicians become more digital-marketing savvy and their campaigns more technologically sophisticated, the Mom Bloggers’ influence in the online community might make them a key demographic to watch this election year.”

Demographically, Mom Bloggers are 52% more likely than all mothers to have completed a college or post-graduate education.

They are roughly the same average age (37) as moms overall
The average household income for Mom Bloggers is $14,000 higher than moms overall, totaling $84,000 per year
They are 88% more likely to pay more for eco-friendly products and services
89% of Mom Bloggers have children between two and eleven years of age

Buying behavior for Mom Bloggers is consistently motivated by environmental concerns and awareness. For example:

Mom Bloggers are 69% more likely than all moms to buy organic food on a regular basis
They are 46% more likely to purchase locally grown food
Mom Bloggers are 49% more likely than all mothers to buy eco-friendly cleaning products

Mom Bloggers’ online habits are also illustrative. In the past 30 days:

90% of Mom Bloggers have visited a social networking website
77% checked the weather
70% paid bills online and
46% browsed the web for coupons.

Says McFarland, “Mom Bloggers... are media makers... Mom Bloggers are a great example of people who use the Internet as their primary platform, but are still active with other kinds of media...”

Mom Bloggers were 38% more likely to have visited a broadcast TV website in the past 30 days and
51% more likely to have visited a newspaper website in that time
20% more likely to listen to news radio and
58% of Mom Bloggers watch the local news on television.

For additional information from Scarborough Research, please view the Infographic here.

Why The Cross-Channel Measurement Problem Is A Software Problem

2011-11-11T19:55:00.001-08:00

by Bill Wise, Friday, Nov. 11, 2011

Pandora founder Tim Westergren recently made a pointed observation about digital radio. Pandora might own 4% of U.S. radio listenership, Westergren observes, but it doesn’t yet command 4% of the $17 billion U.S. radio budget. Westergren argues that measurement is to blame: since Nielsen and Arbitron, the leading radio measurement services, look at terrestrial radio alone, digital media planners don’t have the apples-to-apples comparisons they need to consider Pandora as part of radio budgets.

Obviously, Westergren has a lot to gain from convincing Arbitron and Nielsen to help media planners shift budget over to his company. But I do still think he’s on to something. If measurement doesn’t keep up with the different modes that each media channel takes, then something’s broken.

But I’m not sure that onus of fixing that problem lies entirely with Arbitron, Nielsen, or any other measurement business. I think the onus lies just as much, if not more, with the technologies that help planners make use of the data that other businesses have gathered.

Let’s take a look at Westergren’s argument. What he’s essentially saying is that there are now two segments of radio: the old, terrestrial kind; and the new, digital one. If Arbitron and Nielsen want to make good on their responsibility to the radio business, they need to measure both kinds of radio, equally well.

I wholeheartedly agree. And based on Arbitron’s own announcements this week, it certainly seems that the major measurement firms agree as well.

But at the same time, I think that it’s unrealistic to expect Nielsen and Arbitron to quickly transition into every new form that radio takes, from terrestrial radio to Web to mobile apps, and beyond -- especially when you consider how many challenges a lot of the leading measurement companies have faced in handling the change within their core channels of expertise.

There’s a related point to be made here. From Westergren’s perspective, Pandora might be in the same business as terrestrial radio stations. But from a media planner’s perspective, Pandora’s interactive formats and video ads make it more like another website than another radio station. Measuring Pandora’s listenership may be more relevant for a comScore than it is for an Arbitron and a Nielsen.

Which isn’t to say that Westergren’s fundamental point is wrong. Ad planners looking to compare terrestrial and digital listenership should be able to make that comparison intelligently and simply. I’m just not sure that the answer should come from radically changing what the measurement companies measure. And even if that is what we should expect, it might be too much to ask.

But we do want -- and need -- a way to empower media planners to manage across different kinds of data. We need better ways to compare apples and oranges. That’s not just true in different kinds of radio. It’s true in the need for better ways to consider whether a dollar is better spent on radio or TV, TV or a mobile ad, or in an print ad in a Tokyo daily versus a bus shelter in Sao Paulo.

The problem is that, as is pretty clear from the example of Pandora, it’s never clear just where the necessary data for making those kinds of comparisons will come from. Because while the media industry has grown up with single sources -- Arbitron for radio; comScore for digital; Nielsen for the U.S., BARB for the U.K., etc. TV -- the media landscape has become too fragmented and far-flung to let a single source of data do all the work.

Which is why, in our new media world, the measurement business now really encompasses not one, but two sets of companies.

On the one hand, there are the Nielsen’s, Arbitrons, and comScores -- the companies whose jobs it is to gather the numbers on every channel (and to keep pace with each channel as it evolves). But equally important are the DSPs, the management software, and the cross-channel analysis technologies -- the systems that provide the holistic interfaces, the planning tools, and the analytics packages that let planners roll all the different kinds of data into a holistic, overarching view. That means everything from providing cross-media visualizations in reporting, to creating very sophisticated analytics packages to make comparisons that aren’t necessarily intuitive, and a whole lot more.

That isn’t to say that the measurement industry doesn’t have the responsibility to keep pace -- and stay ahead of -- a fast-changing media landscape. Measurement obviously is only as good as its ability to understand the media universe that it’s measuring (a point on which, again, most folks in the measurement business would agree). But I do think that there’s more to measurement than numbers. A lot of it boils down to technology that can work all the different pieces into a beautiful whole.

In other words, it boils down to technology that orchestrate disparate parts into beautiful music. That’s a vision Tim Westergren would definitely appreciate.

10 Factors Of Viral Propensity

2011-11-11T19:51:00.001-08:00

by Bryan Boettger , Friday, Nov. 11, 2011

I don’t believe you can make a “viral video.” There. I said it.

However, you can game the system. In a media landscape where earned media continues to gain greater and greater importance, we find ourselves consulting brands on analytical ways to judge a qualitative product. A way to judge propensity.

And, sometimes, you can do it by analyzing 10 factors…

1. Authenticity

Viral videos must have a sense of real-ness. It can be planned out, but the video must feel in-the-moment. No one wants to be a shill for your blatant marketing.

2. Irreproducible

A video can be irreproducible in three ways. First, if the video captures a moment in time that cannot be recreated. Second, if the video shows someone doing something so painful, embarrassing, etc. that the general population of viewers would not try it. Third, if the video shows someone doing something the general population of viewers could not do themselves -- this is the one with most opportunity for brands.

3. Odd

This is one of the hardest to define and most subjective. When a video has the quality of oddness, it often elicits a reaction of “huh?” or “what?” Find the weirdest person in your office, put him or her in the video.

4. Funny

Quite simply, will the video make people laugh? But, very importantly: not just you! Will it make a general, broader audience laugh?

5: Musical

Musical doesn’t just mean some background music. It might include the primary subject singing, someone dancing to music, or music setting the scene for the video.

6. Surprising

This might occur through an unforeseen twist, an event people haven’t seen before, or something that happens that scares the viewers.

7. Impressive

A video is impressive if it elicits a reaction of “wow.” There are a few reasons it might do this -- an exhibition of an extreme talent, someone doing something so crazy it is hard to believe, or something being done that must have taken an extreme amount of time to make happen. Often, “impressive,” “surprising” and “odd” can go hand-in-hand.

8. Parodied or Copied

Of all the traits, this is probably the most difficult to accurately assess ahead of time. But, you can ask yourself some questions to help better assess its potential for being parodied or copied. Is there a person with such overt personality characteristics that people will be inclined to mimic them? Are you teaching or showing something that people will want to try themselves?

9. Painful or Embarrassing

As sad as it might be, if someone gets hurt or embarrassed in the video, it is going to help the video’s viral potential. NOTE: I AM IN NO WAY CONDONING OR SUGGESTING PEOPLE SHOULD INTENTIONALLY HURT OR EMBARRASS OTHERS. But, sometimes you catch this accidentally. Always keep the camera rolling!

10. Pop Culture Timeliness

This attribute has the potential for two additional benefits for your video.

Jumpstart: Having a video tied to a timely pop culture event can help kick-start the viral growth of your video. It will instantly have more relevance because it is tied to an event that is already at the forefront of popular interest.

Longevity: Not only can Pop Culture Timeliness jumpstart a video, but it can also make a video’s relevance last longer. The video does not have to create a lasting relevance of its own, but can instead piggyback on the lasting relevance of the pop culture event.

Final Words of Advice

However, as much as you may try to break it down scientifically, remember that it is still much more art than science. It’s just a matter of applying some science to your art.

Media Insights Q&A With Tim Brooks

2011-11-09T10:51:00.000-08:00

by Charlene Weisler , TV Board for Wednesday, Nov. 9, 2011

Tim Brooks is well known and respected in many areas of the media industry. Not only is he a leading researcher with a career in broadcast (CBS and NBC), agency (NW Ayer) and cable (Lifetime, USA Network), he is also deeply involved in music, especially early American music. His effort on behalf of lost early 20^th-century African-American recordings has earned him a Grammy Award as well as the reputation as one of the leading voices in audio copyright.

Tim is also a prolific author of seven books, including the reference book “The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows,” which he penned with fellow researcher Earle Marsh. In my interview with him, Tim talks about his background, the music industry, his work for the CRE, CTAM and offers some predictions for the next few years.

The interview videos can be viewed here. Below is a short excerpt:

CW: Tim, you have done significant work on copyright. Can you please describe your efforts and how copyright impacts the media landscape today?

TB: Copyright is something that we do not pay enough attention to. Obviously some lawyers do, but a lot of us who encounter the subject find it boring -- our eyes glaze over.

However, especially in the information age and the digital age, it is extremely important, and not in the ways you might think. The copyright that I have been deeply involved with has more to do with recordings, but there is a message for the television industry, and it is a message of what not to do as well as what to do.

The record industry, which was really the first to get hit by the digital age and the dispersal of their product willy-nilly, ran to Washington and tried to get tougher copyright laws and sued everybody in sight to try to preserve their basically outdated business model rather than adapt to the new realities of digital distribution. And they have been paying for it ever since.

The recording industry is down around -40% or -50% in revenues over the past decade despite all kinds of laws, all kinds of lawsuits, all sorts of banging on the table and insisting that people must buy things the way they[, the recording industry,] want to sell them.

The lesson is, of course, is that the public doesn’t consume the way you want them to consume. They tell YOU how they want to consume and you have to build a business model around that. The television industry, to its credit I think, in the early- to mid-2000s started looking for ways to adapt its business model to Internet distribution, while still having a business model, and tried things like walled gardens, it tried things like Hulu and things like TV Everywhere, which seems to be the leading candidate now -- the way to monetize other forms of distribution.

The lesson is that the public will pay for entertainment if it is convenient and offers some added value to them. They don’t want to steal for the sake of stealing. But if you insist that your product must be consumed on your own terms, the public will find another way to access it.

CW: Looking ahead, what are your predictions for social media?
TB: A prediction I have for social media comes from a deep-seated feeling that whatever is true today, will not be in five years. Some things will be, but some of the biggest and most obvious will not. In terms of social networking, which is becoming a major part of the Internet, it is having an impact on us and therefore on advertising. At the moment Facebook is the 800-pound gorilla in the room, but then MySpace once was, and before that Friendster, which a lot of people don’t even remember anymore, is road kill by the side of the road.

s? That means Facebook, watch your back. Maybe it will be Google+, which seems to be suddenly emerging from the shadows, or maybe it will be something else. But I think we have to get used to change even among things that are big and seem rooted in stone. They aren’t, in the digital age.

And what does that mean for us in five year

So my prediction is, I don’t know if it will be Google+, but there will be another big social network thing that will suddenly be in the center of everything in five years.

Transform Your Owned Media Into A Content Network

2011-11-08T14:46:00.000-08:00

by Paul Kontonis , Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2011

Marketers are exceptional at messaging during campaigns. They start with owned media channels (brand websites, Facebook pages, YouTube channels, etc.), amplify with paid media, and then drive towards earned media engagement.

But there is still that time in between marketing campaigns where a rich vein of untapped opportunity exists for a brand. Think of owned media as a content network -- a TV network, if you will -- where the audience is always ready to consume content if the value proposition is there.

Let’s suppose that a brand has a YouTube channel populated with some fun commercials and other noncommercial content. Add to this a sizable Facebook page, a Twitter account, and a few Web sites.

These assets are still regularly attracting viewers, even after a campaign has ended, but the brand is now in reactionary, community management mode . There is still an audience coming in that does not care that the brand is in between campaigns; they are expecting content.

The challenge is that originating content is resource intensive and limited to addressing campaign goals. The solution is this: Marketers need to employ co-created and curated content to fill in the gaps.

A smart brand will look for aspiring web TV creators who produce content that aligns with their marketing messaging. They can then make a deal as follows: the content creator will still distribute their show on their own channels (YouTube, blip.tv, etc.) so that he gets credit for his video views.

But the marketer will curate that content for their brand’s owned media channels, providing consistent content for its regularly visiting audience and building off of the content creator’s audience as well. It’s a win-win situation for all parties.

Let’s take the TV network analogy one step further. Think of the curated content as being piloted in between campaigns. The brand gets a chance to see how their audience will react to the content and how they will engage with it – if they will like it, if they will share it. And once marketing dollars do open up for a new campaign, successfully piloted content can be greenlit - the brand and the web series creator can now co-create new content.

Because the marketer has a better idea of what to expect from the creator and the audience, a lot of the risk that brands fear when deciding on a new campaign has been removed. Another win for all parties.

Lastly, when the brand does decide to create original content (as a part of a new campaign), they can turn to the content creators that they’ve already partnered with -- in this analogy, their network show -- to help distribute and promote the new original content to their own audiences in a meaningful way.
Owned media is the key to transforming brand into publisher. The relationship that a brand has with its audience can truly move from sporadic yelling to an always-on value exchange. Content will pave the way.

The Two Worlds Of Online Video: #Occupyyoutube?

2011-11-07T13:13:00.000-08:00

by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan , Monday, Nov. 7, 2011

While YouTube continues its dominance of online video, away from the popular site are seeing more unfilled demand than ever for quality video inventory. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think that YouTube was the 1% of online video, while the rest of the world represented the 99%.

Welcome to the 1%: YouTube
YouTube is reaping the dividends of a lot of smart and lucky moves early on, and Google deserves a lot of credit for taking a long-term approach when it bought the site. At a time when Eric Schmidt is trying to convince anyone who will listen that Google isn’t a monopoly, YouTube greets 80% of U.S. Internet users and accounts for 47% of video views each month, according to comScore.

Cynics have long argued that while YouTube was popular, it was a money pit. Not so, I argued even before the sale to Google -- and increasingly, analysts are coming out with bullish revenue estimates. Barclays Capital’s Anthony DiClemente pegs 2011 revenue at $1.6 billion; considering that total video advertising is forecast to weigh in at $2 billion, then that would mean that YouTube accounts for 80% of the pie.

While I find this figure a tad bullish -- especially considering that the majority of YouTube’s audience is non-English-speaking – still given that YouTube generates 3 billion streams each day and has managed to find one advertiser or another willing to run on most pages, then simple math suggests that YouTube should be generating over $1 billion this year with ease (YouTube’s main page ads probably generate $200 million per year alone).

Then Why Bother Spending $100 Million on New Content?
YouTube is so killing it, that it has decided to take $100 million from Google’s balance sheet and invest in new programming. While many question the wisdom behind this move, I think it’s smart: considering Google generated $29 billion in 2010 annual revenues, $9 billion in Q3 2011 alone and is sitting on over $40 billion in cash and short-term securities, then the $100 million is a rounding error and the initiative will produce a few hits and some misses. Most importantly, it sends a message to Traditional Media Companies (TMCs) that the “Algorithm from Mountain View” is willing to speak the language of Hollywood: paying cold, hard cash for content, regardless of whether it’s a hit or a dud.

The Content Wars
In fact, it’s entirely possible that during negotiations to buy Hulu, Google made it clear to Disney, News Corp. and Comcast (Hulu’s media owners) that it was spending all of this money on content and willing to spend more over time. I had argued that the one-time, extraordinary capital gain from the sale of Hulu was far less interesting to TMCs than the recurring licensing fees that represent an annuity and could have a material impact on their income statements for years to come.

As such, with Google clearly willing to spend big on content (without actually buying it outright), Netflix needing to maintain its momentum, and Amazon willing to lose money as it launches the Kindle Fire, i’s no surprise that Yahoo is entertaining the sale of Asian assets. Given Yahoo’s aspirations in video and its position as the premier digital media company in the world, it will need a lot of resources to keep up.

While the aggregators have certainly trounced content creators, paradoxically, the value of content has soared this year alone and will continue to do so in the years to come. The problem, frankly, is finding investors who understand and can add value -- but that’s a separate article.

Now meet the 99%
Ironically, against this backdrop of YouTube’s dominance, you also see, well, the “other” world of online video.

On one side, you have YouTube, who represents the so-called 1%, with such an abundance of inventory (both good, bad and ugly) that it is now offering advertisers the option to pay if, and only if, the user watches the whole advertisement. Meanwhile, YouTube allows the viewer to skip the ad altogether within seconds of starting. This is genius for Google/YouTube, for it encourages advertisers to bypass other peddlers of advertising, allowing YouTube to duplicate AdWords’ success, though content owners probably don’t share the euphoria around the concept.

Meanwhile, the other so-called 99% of online video can’t find any meaningful, true-quality video inventory at scale, so it relies on massive resyndication of ads and in-banner delivery.

What does this mean?
While Schmidt is expected to talk about Google’s lack of monopoly power, the fact remains that YouTube is well on its way to become the most dominant unit in all of Google’s portfolio of brands, more so than Google’s search or mobile divisions.

A Few Questions For...Nancy Kanter the SVP/Original programming and GM, Disney Junior Worldwide

2011-11-04T15:12:00.000-07:00

A Few Questions For...

Answering a few of our questions this week is Nancy Kanter the SVP/Original programming and GM, Disney Junior Worldwide. Disney Junior ( www.disney.go.com/disneyjunior ) is a multiplatform service for K2-7 and their grown ups, which focuses on emotional and social development, early math and language skills, and encouraging healthy lifestyle and eating choices. Kanter, who joined Disney Channel in 2001 as VP/Original Programming, is credited for the development and production of Disney Junior series such as Jake and the Never Land Pirates, A Poem Is..., Mickey Mousekersize and Special Agent Oso: Three Healthy Steps, Handy Manny, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Imagination Movers, among many others, and upcoming new series projects such as Doc McStuffins, Minnie's Bow-Toons, and Oki's Oasis, as well as numerous acquisitions. She also oversaw the creation of a global development and production operation for the preschool brand, based in London. Kanter was previously President, Bluecow.com, and was an executive producer for Sesame Workshop (f/k/a Children's Television Workshop), where she worked on 30+ Sesame Street specials and direct-to-video releases. She also produced ABC afterschool Specials and worked as a film editor. Disney Junior channels around the world in 21 languages. In the US Disney Junior is currently a programming block on Disney Channel, but that will chance in 2012 when Disney Junior will launch as a stand-alone 24-hour basic cable and satellite channel here.

There are some 28 Disney Junior channels already airing around world. What have you learned from launching the international Disney Junior channels that will help how you launch it in the US?

Many of our global Disney Junior channels are in markets with myriad competitive kids channels. Often far more than we have here in U.S. And what we've seen is that you have to be laser focused on how to get across what differentiates you from the other channels. It needs to be clear to kids -- and in preschool television, clear to parents -- who you are and why to make the choice to tune in. We have taken that to heart both in crafting what we want Disney Junior to represent and how to get that message across.

While there are likely many shared experiences for preschoolers and parents around the world, there are also numerous cultural differences from region-to-region. How do you go about creating a Disney Junior series that might work for all of the Disney Junior channels worldwide? How do you mesh research from one country with that of another - or are the scripts completely re-worked country by country, which is something that can be more easily accomplished with animated series.

It's true there are differences, but we're always surprised by how similar reactions are among the kids and moms we speak with around the world when it comes to the shows kids like and moms approve. We are sensitive to cultural differences so as to make sure there's nothing offensive in one country or another, but in the world of preschool it's usually pretty easy to avoid those trouble spots. We did once find out that it would be better to replace a scene built around making a peanut butter & jelly sandwich with ham & cheese on a croissant for France. And we did.

When creating a preschool property, which obviously also includes keeping their parents/caretakers in mind, do you think TV first and then online, mobile and so forth? (In what order do develop an original property?).

For us it always starts with "why would we want to make this show?" We need to be moved by something, hopefully many somethings - the story, the character, the look, the chance to build a strong learning component around it. And we need to feel enthusiastic about working with the creators for what we know will be at least 2 years before it will see the light of day on television. Do we love this property enough to live with it every day for the next 24 months and beyond? From there we consider how best to bring the property into a kid's world. Would it make sense to seed it digitally? We certainly know that any key TV series will need to find a way to live in the online, mobile, app world. But what we look for is how to make those digital extensions feel a part of the core story without duplicating exactly what we are doing on TV. With the access kids have to digital media, it's a chance to build upon the storytelling and use the technology we have at hand to make it deeper and richer in ways that you can't necessarily do on television.

You announced last week that Disney Junior is working on a new preschool series that is set in the old west, Oki's Oasis, which features Mandy Moore as the voice of Oki the mayor of Nice and Friendly Corners. Question? So now you have covered the world of pirates with Jake and the Never Land Pirates, the old west, the world of secret agents with Special Agent Oso - in 2011 why do you think kids, preschoolers, still relate to cowboys and pirates?

Pirates, cowboys, wizards, princesses - these are archetypes for storytelling that have been with us for generations. We think they are as resonant today as they ever were. They represent the action, drama, and aspiration that can be woven into the kinds of stories that kids want to hear over and over. And when at their best they can move a kid to think, "what if that were me?" which is one of the best ways to use storytelling as a pathway to learning.

Mickey Mouse and his longtime partner, Minnie Mouse, debuted in 1928. Over the last group of years Disney Channel has been re-introducing both characters to kid audiences. In your view how important is it to keep them fundamentally the same as they have always been -- or to reflect kids of today?

In developing our shows around Mickey and Minnie what we've found is that these characters are truly timeless. These are optimistic, active, funny characters who fit perfectly with today's kids. Kids seem entirely engaged by their personalities which reflect how they have always been portrayed.

So, would you please explain how you almost prevented the world from seeing Dog Day Afternoon?

Did Sidney Lumet ever hear this story?

Oh, God! This story will haunt me forever. Here's the way it happened. I was an apprentice editor working on my second film in the business. The most important thing you did as an apprentice editor (aside from soaking up everything you possible could from the people working around you) was to clean the work print of the film and get it to screenings as needed. Unlike today when films are edited digitally, these were the days when you actually edited 35 mm film; there was only one copy made of the dailies from the original negative. Film, a splicer and tape -- those were your tools. Seems awfully quaint now. So, I hauled the reels of the film in two big film cans out onto the street to get them to a screening for the studio execs, Sidney Lumet and Al Pacino at a screening room on 59th St. I put the film cans down on the corner of 50th St. and stepped off the curb to hail a cab down Broadway. No sooner had I put my hand up to flag a taxi when I heard a loud crunch behind me. The crosstown bus had just jumped the curb and run over my two film cans!! My first thought was to flee. Leave the mangled film right where it was and hop the next fight to Mexico never to be heard from again. Thankfully, I collected myself, opened the cans and saw that mercifully while the reels were ruined they protected the film, which was still intact. So, off I went to the screening, transferred the film to new reels and the screening went off without anyone being the wiser. To this day, I can't ride the M50 without a touch of anxiety.

What would you say is the best way for an intern to deal with a disaster?

My best advice to interns in dealing with disaster is to avoid it at all costs. And have your passport up to date.

Five Stories You Should Know About

2011-11-03T15:09:00.000-07:00

by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan , Monday, Oct. 31, 2011

Ok, I’m now beginning my tradition of occasionally writing about how some news stories affect new media and online video.

It’s the End of the World [Wide Web] As We Know It

Investor Fred Wilson is trying to draw attention to two new bills that the content industry's lobbyists have forged without any input from the technology industry. The one in the Senate is called Protect IP and the one in the House is called E-Parasites.

While these laws would make the Web turn into a ghost town at best and die at worst, it’s important to understand that the DMCA has also given VC-funded “disruptors” carte blanche to undermine the IP of traditional media companies.

While no one other than the lobbyists welcome the bills, it’s not hard to understand the rationale when you consider that Viacom’s lawsuit against YouTube was too little too late, and this kind of pre-emptive, draconian first strike will likely make the tech firms they are targeting more willing to play ball. If both parties acted in good faith, everyone would win. But one is blinded by greed, while the other is driven by fear.

Is Netflix the Next AOL?

From July to October, Netflix’s stock price fell from $300 to $100, mainly due to unrealistic investor expectations, investment, branding misadventures and pricing changes. Paul La Monica asks if Netflix is the next AOL. While that may be stretching it, AOL was -- as one of the earlier portals -- an aggregator that lacked original content. Eventually, as users’ surfing patterns changed (away from portals and onto search) and technology evolved, nothing AOL did helped it from losing its one-time prominence.

While Netflix’s rise served as a reminder that aggregation had dethroned content as king, maybe its fall from grace shows that content owners should not be undervalued or forgotten just yet. The rising value and leverage of content suggests that we’re seeing a regression to the mean and a more balanced valuation between content and aggregation.

YouTube Puts Money Where Mouth Is

After arguing that YouTube helps brands, Google is now spending $100 million to lure more professional content owners, including a handful of new ones hailing from traditional media.

There’s no shortage of cynics: “there will be a few gems, but expecting most of this new YouTube content to be pretty darn shitty" says Rocketboom’s Andrew Baron. Time will tell.

If the rumors are true, then I commend YouTube for guaranteeing revenue to some content owners in an effort to increase the overall quality on the site, especially considering that you need billions of video views online to make a million dollars. This supports my forecast that we are about to enter a period of exclusivity, and is one more example of YouTube leading the way and leaving its competitors in the dust.

It’s official: Alloy acquires Smosh

While no official announcement was ever made, when Smosh President Barry Blumberg appeared on the “YouTube as the new MSO” panel at MediaPost’s OMMA West, his title – EVP, Alloy Digital, President, Smosh – suggested that Smosh’s acquisition by Alloy was a done deal.

Smosh is a very popular channel on YouTube and the brain child of Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla. As one of the first acquisitions of YouTube talent, the challenge will now be to retain the duo and keep them motivated to churn out the hits -- not an obvious task but something that Alloy will find ways of doing, I am sure. Having met Barry, I think he is one of the main assets in the deal, especially since he previously served as president of Walt Disney’s Animation unit.

Five companies receive 64% of worldwide digital ad spend

Darren Herman ran some numbers and found that Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL and Facebook commanded 64% of worldwide digital advertising spend, which ZenithOptimedia pegged at $64.03 billion.

Back in 2007, I ran the numbers and found that Google commanded 40% of advertising dollars in the U.S. Now the numbers put Google’s piece of the pie at 45%.

It’s worth noting that for all of the talk about media fragmentation and “the long tail,” the concentration of money in the hands of the few seems no different online than on television.

Changing The Channel: Online Video Has A TV Problem

2011-11-03T13:31:00.000-07:00

by Marla Schimke , Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011

Online video is going to be just like TV. We all hear that at conferences; we all read it in the trades. It has been positioned as a good thing. After all, the creative components of online video open the same emotional and active option that a TV spot does. And it does present new opportunities in terms of scale.

It is here, however, that online video reaches the point where TV comparisons are a bad thing. In fact, online video is running headlong into a TV problem. Here's why.

The basic problem with online video has evolved from the initial challenge it faced -- a lack of inventory -- to a more robust set of problems for the marketing channel: targeting and measurement. TV has also struggled with this pairing of obstacles, but don’t compare the two if you want to solve them. Instead, identify the opportunities that exist within online video to overcome the decade-old challenges of TV.

More specifically, online video can be targeted against the most relevant customer segments and measured accordingly. Now it’s time for advertisers and online publishers to embrace that.

Let's look at some numbers. A report released in late June by eMarketer predicted a watershed year for online advertising, led by a 52 percent spike in online video. Great. But it begs the question of audience.

Research from comScore tells us that in May YouTube took a dominant share of online video with 311 minutes per viewer. Hulu came in at 217 and no one else was even close enough to additionally mention.

Advertisers that take a TV approach to YouTube risk having ads served along side bad music video parodies and cats flushing toilets. If you are targeting New Moms and you take a TV approach to Hulu, you might get SNL or you might get Dexter. If you take a targeting approach you’ll be able to identify your audience and get New Moms wherever they go online.

The same comScore report also tells us that networks are dominating online video ads. Direct deals are minimal at this point. Now networks can approach the problem of targeting and measurement. Instead, they pitch themselves on inventory, distribution and efficiency: the old problem. Sure, that's still a good pitch. A better pitch is around audience, audience and, yet, more audience.

Online video is beyond critical mass and must move toward audience targeting to reach its next level. Don't aim at distribution as a general goal. Aim at a segment of the audience. Don't aim at older adults. Aim at adults who are in the market for a mobile phone, mortgage or holiday shopping deals.

Advertisers and publishers wouldn't pitch display ads any more through distribution and efficiency alone. There is no need to be that rudimentary and ignore the available technologies for online video either. Don’t solve online video’s problem today with the answers to yesterday’s TV problem.

I'm A Mentor, You're A Mentor -- We All Need One

2011-11-02T15:08:00.000-07:00

by Adam Singolda , Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2011

People don’t know how hard it is to build a business -- a real and interesting one.

There is so much noise on the web these days -- from -- from social trendy companies to yet another image-sharing company -- it’s almost easy to get confused.

One of the better CEOs I know here in New York, who runs MySuperMarket.com, tells me something I relate to: that a real and interesting business is one where you can see a path into $50 million a year in revenue. It doesn’t have to be next year, but there should be a path.

Even the most hyped startups eventually could get to high valuations because somewhere, somehow, someone believed that while they are not monetizing now, they will in the future -- up to $50 million in monetization.

Thanks to David Tisch giving me the opportunity, I was a mentor in the New York TechStars program that ended recently.

At first I wasn’t sure if the mentorship concept really works. Could one busy person really help another busy person? Could one piece of advice really make a difference among so much advice? Could a meeting once a month really make a dent in a product, in a business plan, in the success of a company?

Three months in, I think the answer is yes.

If you (the reader) take a moment now to think, you’ll notice you probably have at least one mentor right now. You might not call them mentors, they might not have stock in your company, and you might see them less than once a month -- but you probably have at least one person you could call a mentor.

If you think about it, you must be someone’s mentor right now as well.

A mentor is a person that is there to give you a fresh, objective, and intelligent advice. It could be a question he/she asks that got you to think, or a statement he/she said that got you to wonder, or just a person you could call with any question. Trust me, it is rarely an introduction or something too tangible you could put in your commission plan.

It’s something you get to appreciate looking back, rather than looking forward to.

Thanks to the TechStars program, I realized my mentor is probably the MySuperMarket CEO. I just never called him one.

I’m a mentor, and you’re a mentor. We all need one to build a real and interesting business.

Still Awaiting The Pod People

2011-11-02T15:03:00.000-07:00

by TS Kelly , Wednesday, Nov. 2, 2011

In the 1956 classic film “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” Dr. Miles Bennell, portrayed by the late Kevin McCarthy, spends most of the film warning of “pod people” -- aliens taking over the identities of their human hosts.

The movie scared the crap out of me as a child. Checking under the bed for “pods” became a nighttime ritual for a long while. Thankfully, they never showed up.

Circa 2011, I wouldn’t mind a little “pod people” invasion, at least when it comes to digital video. When advertising budgets are spent on television, marketers and publishers negotiate at length over program options including GRP weights, frequency and other campaign particulars. Attention is now also given to identifying preferred pod placement and related performance -- rightfully so. As a recent report from Ebiquity suggests, pod position within pods can have a noticeable impact on television campaign performance.

However, shifting to an online view, it becomes apparent that advertisers presently use few tools or related metrics to assess video ad performance of individual pods, particularly within long-form content such as TV episodes or movies. Yes, we look at click-through and completion rates, and a few other performance indicators, but not to the sophistication and precision that sight, sound, and motion efforts should inspire.

We Need “Pod People” Now!

eMarketer projects $5.5 billion online video spend by 2014. That’s a nice figure, but we can get there much faster. To open up the floodgates of video ad budgets, marketers and publishers should consider becoming “pod people,” seeking greater emphasis and performance detail on pod placements such as mid-roll within online video ad campaigns.

According to a recent study, mid-roll ad placements in full episode players (online environments for watching full-length television programs, movies, and other long-form content) handily outperformed both pre-roll and post-roll video ads.

To be fair, mid-roll placements have a pre-set advantage over pre-roll. They typically appear in environments in which viewers have made a commitment to watch long-form content, similar to viewing broadcast and cable programs with typical commercial breaks.

However, unlike TV and cable programs, which can be fast-forwarded or skipped via DVR, online commercials cannot be easily avoided without fully exiting the viewing experience. Translation: online video viewers are a more captive audience, ready to interact with your marketing messages.

Let the Invasion Begin!

Turning marketers and publishers into pod people, however, will require significant campaign “mindset” changes, creating many new benefits and challenges. Here are some suggestions for a successful future “pod” infestation:

1. Move beyond pre-roll –Forget the 30-second ad in front of the 30-second clip. As consumers shift to viewing full-length movies and TV shows in online environments, marketers and publishers have a tremendous opportunity to learn how to better balance content and adjacent advertising. Inserting mid-roll into video ad campaigns would be an excellent first step.

2. Mix formats and creative options – With more than 99% of video ads just repurposed TV creative, “what works on TV will work online,” seems to be the current mantra. I will let others throw the GRP grenades, both for and against. Shifting to a wider mix of display and video ad formats will help illustrate how online video will carve out its own unique planning path that is neither TV nor digital, but an amalgam of both.

3. Get the research folks busy – A wider mix of campaign creative and video ad formats will offer plenty of data to analyze. In addition, more dollars shifting to online video will prompt more questions, which, in turn, will require a greater emphasis on research and analytics. It’s about time we saw online studies looking at the combination of display, search and video.

4. Stress better labeling – Outside of pre-roll, few publishers offer consistent detail of placement labeling, specifically for pod ad activity in long-form content. As a consequence, ad performance in pods between pre- and post-roll may be more difficult to determine. Arguably, few marketers ask for such detail, as it typically requires an added layer of campaign instrumentation between parties. Short term, marketers should request such detail in their RFPs.

5. Promote new industry standards - Long term, marketers must work with their technology, agency, and media partners, as well as industry organizations to create labeling standards for digital video pod placements, similar to what we have for display creative. The industry has already widely embraced VAST and VPAID standards; it’s time such standards were extended to include enhanced placement labeling.

We have a long way to go before achieving investment parity between TV and online video. Like it or not, however, consumers are already making the transition en masse to online for video in all its forms. Marketers and investment will no doubt follow. The easier we collectively make planning, buying, implementing and reporting video ad campaigns, the easier the transition will be for all involved parties. It’s time to embrace “pod people”!

At the end of the movie, a hysterical Dr. Bennell, runs through the streets of the small California town, screaming “They’re here already! You’re next!”

If only that were true…

Mary Meeker's Web 2.0 Presentation, or How to Turn the Worst of Times Into the Best of Times

2011-10-20T13:37:00.000-07:00

by Catharine P. Taylor , Thursday, Oct. 20, 2011

The presentation that Kleiner Perkins’ Mary Meeker made earlier this week at Web 2.0 has been making the rounds, as well it should. The slide that best summed up the state of our world, was #65 (out of 67). It said simply:

Economy – Often darkest before dawn. At least we know what the problems are. Now we need the resolve to fix them. Across-the-board sacrifice needed. (Editor’s note: Which we’re so good at!)

Tech industry – Wow! Unprecedented times! If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs …”*

*Rudyard Kipling - “If”

Or maybe we should quote a little Dickens, and translate this slide to: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” But go through the slides, and you may just discover how to turn the latter into the former.

The reason I bring this slide up is because, in looking through the presentation, it becomes clear that if advertisers can turn their gaze away from the car crash that is the economy, there’s still great opportunity in investing ad budgets in technology, because that’s where the money is going, and where the diverging roads of the economy and the tech industry just might come together.

The facts that are truly eye-popping in Meeker’s presentation are the ones about mobile – particularly smartphone penetration – and commerce.

To wit:

E-commerce has outpaced U.S. retail sales for the last year, and didn’t suffer nearly the decline back in 2009 that sales overall did. While retail sales rose roughly 7 % (surprising, I know), e-commerce rose 15 %. Yeah, about twice as much.

Gross mobile sales have increased fourfold in the last two years at eBay; threefold at Paypal, twofold at Amazon; and one-and-a-half fold at Target.

When asked to describe why they decided to purchase online, 52 % of U.S. smartphone users said it was because they found a better price online; 51 % said it was because they found a better price at another store.

As it was with radio during the Great Depression, Internet and smartphone penetration have continued to grow at crazy trajectories throughout the current downturn – with mobile demonstrating the sharpest growth curve of all.

Pandora (60%) and Twitter (55%) get more than half their traffic from mobile devices. (Facebook is at 33%)

Entangled within the presentation are also the newest numbers that support what everyone in digital is well too aware of: that ad spending in digital media still vastly lags how much time consumers spend with it. When you layer that fact onto the huge growth in mobile commerce, you wonder why advertisers aren’t more willing to put their money where the transactions are. TV, despite 800 numbers, and the best efforts of cable providers to push addressable advertising, can’t do that. Some more facts -- or are they punchlines?

As U.S. TV viewership stagnates at 43 % of overall media consumption time, the amount of money spent on TV is at 43 % – and growing. In the U.S. people spend 25% of their time on the Internet, and yet still (still!) 19% of ad dollars are spent there. In print and radio, the disconnect is even nuttier. While readership of print is at 8%, 27 % of budgets are still being spent there; 16% of time is spent listening to radio, and dropping, but spending is holding steady at 11%.

Given the rapid ascension of the smartphone, in mobile the gap is much more noticeable. People spend 8% (only?) of their time on their phones, and marketers spend .5% of their budgets there.

If you’re an advertiser. look at the facts before you, and try to understand what they say: if you invest in online media, and get in early on mobile, you can take advantage not only of the eyeballs that are increasingly gravitating to those platforms, but also, in a bottom-line driven world (made more so during the Great Recession), to something far more impactful: sales.

How should marketers start reallocating budgets? Look at this presentation and repeat after me: “Well, duh.”

Digital Approaches Tipping Point, Narrows Ad Agency Gap To Just

2011-10-20T08:04:00.000-07:00

Digital Approaches Tipping Point, Narrows Ad Agency Gap To Just One

by Joe Mandese,

For the first time since being tracked, digital media - including online, social and mobile - has approached parity with television as the most important medium among agency executives, according to the latest quarterly survey from Strata, the media data processing provider that services roughly half of all U.S. ad agencies.

Asked what their No. 1 medium of choice was during the third quarter of 2011, 34% of agency executives cited digital, only one point lower than the 35% who cited local TV. That's the closest point of parity in the three years since Strata began querying its agency clients on the dominance of various media in their workflow and budgeting, and represents a 43% leap from the second quarter of 2011.

The findings, which are based on a segment of more than 900 agencies that process about $50 billion worth of media through Strata’s systems, also reflect the rapid decline in the importance of television over the past three years, along with other traditional media, as agencies and clients refocus their energies on digital media matters and workflow.

In fact, the survey indicates that digital may be at the tipping point of overtaking all other media in terms of importance, especially if the economy grows any more unstable. While the third-quarter survey indicated that advertising budgets remain relatively stable, and continue to grow overall, the agency respondents said print (52%) and local TV (24%) are the media most likely to take a hit by ad spending cuts.

While the executives said their advertising plans currently remain stable, most said they don’t expect the marketplace to gain strength until after 2012, and that TV-centric categories such as automotive and entertainment are the categories asking to cut ad spending the most, according to 30% and 21% of respondents, respectively.

“The economy is forcing many advertisers to look for more affordable ad avenues – i.e. digital and radio,” said Strata President John Sheldon, adding, “But it’s also important to note that digital has become much more valuable and accepted by C-level employees in recent years.”

That is clearly reflected in Strata’s tracking data, which show a steady growth in the Internet, while spot TV has steadily decreased over the past 12 quarters, according to Sheldon.

“There hasn’t been a huge disparity between Digital and TV since Strata started the survey in 2008, but the margin has steadily decreased quarter over quarter, he said, noting that, “In 2008, 60% of respondents indicated that TV was a top focus, with digital at 12%.

The data indicate that social and mobile are boosting the overall role of digital in agency and client organizations. Nearly nine out of 10 (89%) of respondents indicated that they would use Facebook in their campaigns during the third quarter, up 10% from the second quarter.

And for the first time, YouTube (39%) was the No. 2 most desirable social medium for campaigns, surpassing Twitter (37%).

Google+ is still on the outside looking in with only 14% planning to use it during the third quarter, down 47% from the second quarter. LinkedIn was a strong No. 4 in social media choices at 22%.

The iPhone and Apple’s iAds platform continued to be the market leader in mobile advertising perceptions with 78% of respondents noting it is the device their clients are most interested in advertising on, though that is down 10% from the second quarter. Google’s Android platform, however, is closing the gap at 54%, up 7% from a year earlier.

The iPad remains strong platform among tablets at 46%, up 85% from last year.

“With Amazon and Apple continuing to focus on content for tablets, 69% say that focus will make this medium more attractive to advertisers,” the Strata report noted.

agency, digital, mobile, social media, tv

Despite these trends, the Strata respondents were mixed on the long-term dominance of digital vs. “traditional” media. While one-fifth said they anticipate spending more on digital than traditional media within “one to three years,” more than a third (36%) said digital will never dominate their advertising budgets.

Those perceptions of ad agency executive no doubt are colored by the sentiment of their clients. Only 56% of the agency execs said they believe their clients “understand the value” in digital, while 44% said that they don’t see the value.

Why Marketers Should Take Ownership Of How-To Videos

2011-10-19T15:12:00.000-07:00

by Neil Perry , Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2011

When was the last time you really enjoyed reading a new device installation or set-up manual? If “never” is your answer, you just may have stumbled upon one of the best video marketing opportunities now available to today’s brand marketers. Video-izing instruction and how-to manuals can make your customers’ lives a lot easier. But it’s not only a good customer service idea, it’s also a solid marketing opportunity.

At a top level, producing such videos couldn’t be much easier. All you really need is a link to a YouTube video, or better yet, to a video posted on your company’s or client’s own Web site. Of course, you’ll also need the actual video, but that’s not too difficult to develop. You can produce these videos in-house or through a crowdsourced video company at very low costs, with a real consumer feel to them, as well.

Taking a step back, the last big innovation in instruction manuals was the color-coded wiring guide for Dell (and many other computer companies now, as well), developed to help folks set up their new desktop computer systems.

Now, videos can be more effective than written instructions in terms of showing customers how things fit together and the easy steps needed to assemble their new purchase. Everyone involved can save all of the extraneous and often unnecessary details for a companion manual by using the video to share the basics. Unless it involves a very complicated purchased item, it is generally wise to keep your video short and concise, ideally less than two minutes.

If you are worried about cramming a ton of information into such a tight timeframe, remember that your customers can easily rewatch the piece and get the information they need without having to leaf through scores of pages of text and diagrams that never seem to look like the actual product spread out on the floor before them.

One specific form of these videos is called an unboxing video. It’s pretty much the same concept as the how-tos, except it simply shows viewers how to remove an item from its packing box, identifies what each part is, and quickly shows the very basic steps needed for assembly.

This is particularly beneficial when items like a new digital camera or a music system are involved. The power of sight, sound and motion can go a long way toward managing the angst customers may have as they start to pull all of the parts from a box prior to assembling their new toy.

Perhaps the most powerful marketing opportunity associated with these videos lies in just being able to reiterate the most compelling one or two points about the product your customer just purchased. Of course, you don’t need to sell your customer at this point, but providing a gentle reminder about the qualities of your product will help elevate your brand, as well as customer appreciation -- especially if your video ultimately makes their life easier.

Finally, a few marketers are taking online video manuals a step further, using QR codes. In this scenario, consumers can travel down the aisle of a Big Box retailer and see a QR code on a shelf tag for a product that clearly will require some unboxing and assembly. The prospect of having to assemble immediately concerns the potential buyer: However, the QR code takes the buyer directly to an online video that briefly shows how easy it is to assemble and use the product, while reiterating some of its key marketing benefits.

Today’s consumers expect ease-of-use from brands at all levels and the responsibility to convey this rests largely with marketing teams. If done correctly, video manuals can simultaneously “wow” customers, help them assemble a product quickly and easily, and then remind them of how smart they are for having purchased the brand-new product in the first place.

Is Branded Content Salvation for Producers -- Or Simply A Mirage?

2011-10-17T17:40:00.000-07:00

by Ashkan Karbasfrooshan , Monday, Oct. 17, 2011

Geoff Ramsey is uniquely positioned to talk about advertising and video as the CEO of eMarketer, the research and analysis firm that covers digital marketing and media, and whom I occasionally use as the poster child for how forecasts are always off (hopefully he also has a sense of humor).

Last summer, Ramsey spoke to Beet TV and gave hope to content creators by noting “the big opportunity for marketers is to create ‘useful’ content. Marketers need to be in the content business.”

Ramsey’s comment can be deconstructed in three statements:

1) That advertising needs to evolve into content

2) That marketers need to be in the content business and

3) That the content needs to be useful.

Content Creators are Caught Between a Rock and a Hard Place

The CPM (cost per thousands of impressions) model plays to the advantage of aggregators and disadvantage of creators. As such, while I am against black-box pricing, content creators need to innovate and come up with an alternative to the CPM pricing model (in fact, the CPM is only relevant if the volume of impressions is large enough).

Defining the Problem and Spotting the Opportunity

Content producers are an extinct species because their production costs are much higher than the short -erm revenue they derive from distribution deals. So long as advertisers buy advertising through CPM, then content creators are disadvantaged for only distributors can aggregate enough videos and impressions to offer reach and generate meaningful revenues via CPM-priced advertising.

It’s a numbers game (which plays to the advantage of aggregators) whereas content creators are by nature in the quality game (some admittedly being of greater quality than others).

Therein lies the opportunity: for content creators to strike deals with marketers via fixed pricing models and then offer reach as additional variable priced options.

Ramsey’s Three Statements

Statement 1: Advertising as Content

Given the cluttered media and advertising landscape and the shift towards the Web and Mobile, marketers need to think and act like content creators.

However, few consumers actually welcome a total blurring between church and state. There’s something to be said about knowing that an editorial is just that -- an editorial -- and that an advertisement is an advertisement. Advertorials may be useful and effective, but that’s more art than science.

Statement 2: Marketers Need to Become Content Producers

In some cases, marketers need to think like publishers, but more often than not, it’s simpler to license content for a campaign’s objectives or outsource production.

In the past, we have created custom content for advertisers, we have also licensed our existing videos to blue-chips like Coca Cola and McDonald. Some brands will want to own the content and control the messaging and will feel the need to create the content, be it internally or by outsourcing production. Ultimately, the success will be determined by how videos support the objective, and not who produced the content.

Statement 3: Content Needs to be Useful

A lot of marketers get caught up with trying to be hip or funny, but rarely does that sell product (Old Spice guy notwithstanding). I’ll take useful over flashy any day. Chrysler’s “Made in Detroit” campaign was more effective than the Fiat 500’s Jennifer Lopez campaign (Chrysler and Fiat are part of the same company).

With online video in particular, infotainment online video will lead to better results than scripted entertainment because building distribution for reference content is simpler than it is for fiction.

Challenges of branded content

Will branded content ever see the light of day, let alone work? In January 2011, I wrote “Nine challenges facing branded content.”. While those challenges remain, branded content is rapidly moving from concept to reality.

Costly with no guarantees

To execute on this concept of ads-as-content, you will likely need a direct sales force, which is expensive, or at the very least, a strategic partnership with a successful sales force that doesn’t content itself with the low-hanging fruit, which right now is pre-roll. While the large ad networks have hitherto focused on pre-rolls, an increasing number are looking at content in all shapes as forms.

Good luck going against the grain

But this misses the greater challenge of all, which is that the world is moving toward targeting audience through technology and not via content (although content is more important: no one wants to serve an ad on a Nazi site, but they would target the same user if he was on ESPN).

Video has failed to hit forecasts because everyone’s focused on the low-hanging fruit. There are no shortcuts in life; real results only come through hard work and doing the things that others don’t want to do. With that in mind, expect less resistance toward branded content in the years to come.

Boomers

2011-10-13T07:29:00.001-07:00

Boomers

In a recent commercial for a Chevy Camaro, a gray-haired couple turns young again when they get into the car and peel away from their house. It's a sleek spot for a sexy car and also speaks to its target audience - boomers.

Yes, boomers are buying sports cars, and they're also buying iPads, Smartphones, plasma screens and lots of other cool gadgets, doodads and gizmos. They've got money to spend, and money to burn, and marketers are eager to reach them.

But the key to successfully reaching boomers is to use ads and programming that speaks to them and reflects them back the way they want to be seen, experts say.

Networks from RLTV to Hallmark to the big broadcast networks, as well as Web sites and portals, and health and lifestyle centric online publishers, are actively targeting boomers. And with good reason.

The 55-Plus Marketing Sweet Spot

Marketers who only focus on the "sweet spot" of the 25 to 54 demographic will miss about 58% of the population of the United States, or about 180 million people, Nielsen said. On its blog, the research firm has noted that many marketers have misconceptions about boomers in particular when it comes to brands and buying habits, but clearing away those wrong notions can help marketers reach a group that has plenty of disposable income.

Contrary to popular belief, boomers are not set in their ways and they're just as likely to switch brands as younger consumers are. In fact, the 55-plus group has similar buying rates for consumer packaged goods as does the 25 to 54 demo. Also, the 55-plus group spends the most time watching TV, logging about 6.5 hours a day, and also spends about 85 minutes per day online, Nielsen said.

"Boomers are an affluent group who adopt technology with enthusiasm (think about the number of parents or grandparents who regularly send e-mails or upload photos to Facebook and other sites). They have also shown a willingness to try new brands and products," Nielsen said.

Alan Wurtzel, President of Research at NBC Universal, said so-called "alpha boomers" in the 55 to 64 segment account for about $1.8 trillion in spending power and that each year about four million people join this demo. As a whole they're as excited about technology, cable, broadband and new gadgets as younger demos are, he said.

"Marketers are realizing this is a very important segment that perhaps has been overlooked," he said. "There is a broad range of categories wanting to reach them. It's not just pharmaceutical and travel." Increasingly, technology, consumer electronics makers and automotive companies are developing ads specifically geared to that group. The growth in alpha boomers is important for nearly every network to heed with the exception of MTV-esque or Nickelodeon-type networks clearly targeting very young demos, Wurtzel said.

"You could list a half dozen of those networks where it's not in target audience. But for everyone in the mass broadcast media it's relevant and for any media companies that has depended on the baby boom as a core of their audience for their past 20 years, it's relevant," he said.

Targeting Boomers

There are some networks too that specifically target boomers, such as RLTV, which is now found in 15 million cable homes. RLTV has its pulse on the interests of this age group.

"Boomers watch an incredible amount of news. Many watch TV during the day, but boomers and seniors are watching at more times of day and they consume enormous amounts of information, content, news, finance, health information," said Elliot Jacobson, Senior VP of Programming and Production at RLTV.

They also want to see themselves reflected back on TV. "They want to see people who look like them doing the things they aspire to do or are doing," he said.

In addition, the boomer generation is highly connected online and in social forums. They are contributing greatly to the growth of Facebook and other social platforms and they are watching online video and TV at the same time, said Hanna Gryncwajg, Senior VP of Ad Sales at RLTV. Nielsen found that 75 percent of those 55-plus are online and watching TV simultaneously. As such, RLTV will be launching a new programming initiative for 2012 called Funding Your Future that marries online and TV efforts. It will be the network's first far-reaching multi-platform campaign and RLTV is currently talking to financial companies about sponsorship.

Syndication is also a top performing daypart for boomers and also for adults 45 to 64, said the Syndicated Network Television Association.

Social Media and Boomers

Social media can help drive boomers to watch TV.

"Social media has been great at creating individual TV hits and its importance as a brand enhancer/builder cannot be underestimated," said Pam Slay, Senior Vice President, Network Program Publicity for Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel. "Social media has the potential to lift ratings.For example, original programs that do not have a significant paid media spend [still] get a big boost from aggressive promotion in social media."

Slay said that the Hallmark efforts are paying off. The network is reaching younger fans and converting them into viewers, while the boomers who were always viewers are becoming more and more sophisticated at integrating viewing with social media.Social media also lets the network reach its viewers with marketing and tune-in messages even when they're not watching TV.

"I might not always be standing around with a magazine in hand, but I have Facebook, Twitter, Miso and GetGlue on my mobile phone, my iPad, my laptop. If I'm a fan or follower of Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel, I'm going to get a tune-in message at varying intervals all day leading up to a world premiere" she said.

That messaging, coupled with offers and contests and other interactive content, deepens the relationship and the engagement with viewers of all ages.

Later -- Daisy

Daisy Whitney for Cynopsis Media

10.13.11

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