Search results matching tags 'digital' and 'digital advertising'

Mixx beckons advertisers with Sifter service

2371004 — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:19:00 GMT

Some interesting innovations going on at Mixx, the social networking/news ranking website that's like Digg, but probably a little better.

Mixx is offering advertisers the chance to get direct feedback for their creatives from its heavyweight users with a new service called Mixx Sifter.

Advertisers can upload their creatives to the website, which will then be voted on and ranked by Mixx users, with the most popular ads awarded prominent location (and preternatural hype) on the Mixx homepage.

There's incentive for the users too, called Karma Points, which can be exchanged for prizes and such.

So advertisers need not fear unwarranted backlash from those in power, well, in theory, as the Mixx users voting on the ads are those trusted resources who have spent many hours logged on and contributing to the site.

Techcrunch reports that the service will typically costs advertisers $8,000 to upload their creatives to the site -- which can be in any format, banner ads, video, etc. -- and will compete against four other ads, which are then ranked 1-5.

It's a good idea, appealing to both advertisers and users, and even the uninitiated -- as a frequent Digg user, I'm suffering from Mixx-remorse, as the number of hours spent on Digg could have meant exciting prizes and notoriety on Mixx.

Let's see if Digg responds, well not 'if', but when, as it has been long speculated that Digg was working on something similar to Mixx Sifter.

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Chinwag: The economics of Free

2371004 — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 12:00:00 GMT

The emergence and abundance of free content online over the past number of years has had a profound affect on the way many of us conduct our lives and indeed the way businesses conduct their business.

Whether email, newspapers, Skype, Wikipedia, Spotify, etc., how come we're so deserving of all these free services when we were absolutely willing to pay for the same (similar) right less than a decade ago?

And how free is free? Is it sustainable? Must companies now monetise or die? Or risk asking Generation Free to pay for content?

These were some of questions being tossed around the basement in a slick-Soho bar last night at the UK's Trade & Investment Chinwag discussion, cleverly titled Freeconomics.

A panel consisting of Azeem Azhar, managing partner at Open Capital Partners; Victor Keegan, technology columnist at the Guardian; the night's MC Nic Brisbourne, venture capitalist and partner at DFJ Esprit; Charlie Blake Thomas, commercial director at Huddle; Alan Patrick, consultant at Broadsight and finally Bruce Daisley, representing YouTube.

On the agenda: free content, and at what cost does success at "free" come with..

For example, storage dependant sites such as Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, subsidies from display advertising can not meet the costs of scaling.

But what are the other options, and what issues do they bring? Why for example do Freemium models (free 'basic' and paid 'pro') work for some and not for others (think flickr vs Facebook)? Will we see a return of micropayments?

Before panic sets in, the panel agrees that a universal micropayment approach seems a bit far off, but would be a possible solution for a number of businesses struggling under the advertising decline, specifically newspapers.

Victor Keegan said if a micropayment system would have been introduced when the internet was still a nascent luxury, relegated to programmers and D&D enthusiasts, then "we wouldn't be in this mess".

He gives an example of a teenager sending a text-message, they don't think twice about sending a 50-word text message for 18p, but scoff at the idea of having to pay for a 25,000 word email, simply because the micropayment system has always been there for texting, it is engrained in its structure.

Today's generation has grown up with free email, with nearly limitless storage, such as Gmail, which was criticised last month when its servers crashed, rendering the service useless for a number of hours - invoking a strange kind of furore that could only be quelled by reminding users that Google offers the service for free, thus, no reasons to be angry.

It brings the question whether 'free' is really 'free', obviously Google serves targeting advertising to users in exchange for using the service, which brings up the question, who is the service for?

Charlie Blake Thomas said that Google really isn't a service for us, the searchers, but actually for advertisers, where it gets its revenue from, we're just the middlemen, acting as a muse.

Thomas said that understanding who the end user for your business is critical when deciding at what point will users pay, and how it fits into the overall business.

Azeem Azhar said that even though Google figured it out, thanks to the proliferation of open source software, we have witnessed the end of big companies making huge profits, such as Microsoft, or Google itself.

Azhar said: "It's difficult for people to accept but the granduar of a huge company like Microsoft has been shifting to teenagers coding in their parents basement. It's not the American dream."

Alan Patrick said that open source software, such as Linux, has also shifted the economics to the user, when suddenly companies are forced to upgrade their systems on their own instead of those who created the software.

The people who have created this free software aren't getting rich, but they've managed to offset costs by shifting the expenses to the user.

To the dismay of Nic Brisbourne, venture capitalists were given a lot of slag for the current state of affairs, by encouraging digital startups to seek out audiences with loads of free content without having a business models first or ways to monetise traffic.

But for new start-ups, is it better to have a premium product in which you can charge a few hardcore, loyalists, or free content to the masses at your expense, hoping advertising revenues will pick up.

A large portion of the evening was dedicated to talk about the newspaper industry, however the panel offered a refreshing view on the plights of print, opposed to what is being espoused in the media itself.

The introduction of new devices such as the Kindle and the iPhone could be an industry saviour, as paid digital content could translate better on these handhelds better than on a computer screen.

There is new innovation about, including in Japan where readers pay simply for a newspaper barcode, which allows access to online articles.

Newspapers are also looking at manufacturing their own proprietary hardware to carry about digital editions of their content.

The panel predicted that a number of newspapers will make the transistion online, its inevitable, but print will never completely die out.

Charlie Blake Thomas said that the industry needs to face its 'Kodak Moment' when the film company itself realised that the entire industry had shifted digital, and it had to react to stay in the game.

The panel said that newspapers are afraid to make the first leap because of the readership that could be gained or lost by making a miss-step. They asked for more collaboration between titles, but not mergers, as that would only inhibit innovation, allowing newspapers to wallow in complacency, like they have been doing for the past 20 years.

Are online publishers just Digital Windsocks?

2371004 — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 11:53:00 GMT

We are entering an age where publishers are becoming "Digital Windsocks", following the audience and the advertising revenue, damaging reputations and quality of content quality in the wake.

The role of a journalist is evolving to include a greater understanding of search engine optimisation and interpreting data, but in the effort to appeal to search engines, is quality journalism suffering?

Yesterday, an Association of Online Publishers (AOP) forum brought together an expert panel to examine the editorial impact of SEO and to look at what the future for news production might be.

Andrew Currah, lecturer for Reuters Institute of Journalism at Oxford University, and author of 'What's Happening to Our News', which examines the changing business of journalism in the digital age, introduced the concept of a Digital Windsock.

Currah said now there is a focus to accumulate attention around news to build advertising revenue. Publishers are chasing clicks, but have no clear sense of how much the digital audience is worth or when digital revenues will recoup the costs of multimedia integration.

According to recent trends, most commercial news website traffic enters through a "side door" of search results and RSS feeds, leaving the site within a matter of minutes.

In the UK, 30% of time spent online is on 10 URLs or less, none of these are commercial news sites.

During his research Currah found that new forms of reading are emerging. People now power browse, looking horizontally through titles and a few lines down the left side of the content, scouring for anything of interest, before moving on.

He also found that publishers are now frequently looking towards experimental methods to take advantage of the user "clickstream" some even turning to neuroscience to measure the subconscious foundations of the web user.

Publishers at the Guardian, Al-jazeera and the Times have recently experimented with an open-source approach to their websites, allowing the user to control and shape the content they want.

However, Currah warns of a dark side to the innovation and the pursuit of clicks, such as what happens to quality when content is shaped for the digital crowd, will new techniques like SEO lead to softening of the news agenda and will publishers continue to funnel resources into keywords instead of newsbreaking content?

The evidence is already apparent that the news agenda is as soft as butter. Scanning the 'Most Popular/Most Read' story lists from national news websites, it becomes clear that reader attention is concentrated around quirky content, clicks can give a good indication of audience interest and boredom, and the immediacy of clickstream is starting impact editorial decision making.

Currah predicts that the future will see a division between the Windsocks and The Anchors; those handful of publishers able to resist lure of clickstream.

However, it is certain that navigating the clickstream whilst maintaining editorial standards will require some sort of economic shelter, and it's inevitable that Anchor publishers will provide this by using a mix of paid-for-content and advertising revenue.

It's a combination that works, in my opinion, and I don't think the Windsock concept is totally lost on the readers themselves. Those wanting unbiased, quality news content will pay for it if necessary, leaving the quirkiness and frivolous to those that don't charge.

Is this Twitter's first third-party advertisement?

2371004 — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 11:31:00 GMT

Twitter has been quietly promoting a new service for the business class, known as ExecTweets, a sort of Twitter/LinkedIn mash-up created by conversational ad agency Federated Media, with a healthy dose of sponsorship from Microsoft.

ExecTweets itself doesn't seem to be anything worth Tweeting-home about, a worthy service I guess, if you're interested in following stuffed-shirts from Coca-Cola, GM, Unilever, etc.

However, it's interesting that Twitter co-founder Biz Stone chose to officially endorse the website on the company blog.

Twitter always appears to be teetering on the edge of being an enjoyable, clean service, to one bogged down with targeted, obnoxious advertising.

It seems inevitable, the ads will come, or will they?

It's unlikely that Twitter chose to promote ExecTweet's just because, especially with super-savvy John Battelle at the helm of Federated Media, whose advertising network includes a couple of sites you might of heard of, say the insanely popular BoingBoing, or TechCrunch.

On Battelle's official blog, he noted that: "Federated Media felt that Twitter should share some of the revenue associated with ExecTweets since this project is made possible using their open platform."

So a little cash goes Twitter's way and ExecTweet's gets a mention on the company blog and a small display ad on users' homepages, easypeasy. It's not clear how much money Federated Media is offering Twitter, but I doubt that's important.

The small display ads, which popped up on homepages a couple of weeks ago to promote Twitter's in-house services, such as it's new search function, will also advertise a couple of different platforms, including Tweetie, an iPhone client and the self-explanatory Twittervision, although it has been made clear that Tweetie will not be offering revenue to Twitter, rather, Twitter approached Tweetie because it genuinely found it to be a useful application. Fair enough.

Is this as close as Twitter will come to full-fledged advertising? Quiet promotions billed as "interesting topical experiences"?

That's fine with me.

A while back Brand Republic reported about an advertising network called Adjix which developed a platform for Twitter text ads, yet I have not seen anything of the sort. And if I did, I would probably stop following said advertiser.

In-house Twitter ads have popped up on the website in the past month or so, but I would hardly call them obtrusive.

BR also reported yesterday that Twitter is being tempted with boatloads of cash from potential investors who want their share.

Stone said the company was "being very careful about who they accept money from and who they give their equity to" and also said that a recent round of funding from venture capitalist Benchmark and Institutional Venture Partners was enough to get by.

So the question remains, is ExecTweet Twitter's first official but unofficial looking third party advertisement? Can a slough of targeted, annoying advertising by sure to follow a la Facebook?

Probably not. For a while at least. But it's possible a precedent has been set.

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Motrin Moms derail J&J campaign

2371004 — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 15:02:00 GMT

The self-professed "Motrin Moms", a small group of incensed Twitter users who barked and yelped loud enough to quell an entire Johnson & Johnson Motrin television and print campaign, must be a little unsettling for marketers.

The campaign, which has been around for a couple of months - without incident - was cast into the limelight after it caught the attention of a few influential Twitter users over the weekend, who amassed an unprecedented backlash, the kind only a scorned mother could dish.

Watch the (presumably) offending ad here, on AdAge and try to figure out what set them off. Not being a mother, I truly don't see the transgression; in fact I think the ad looks pretty sharp.

A quick news roundup shows moms are fuming because the ad suggests wearing babies in a sling is a fashion statement, I think. Whatever, they carried us around for at least nine months; they have a right to be pissed about these things.

I can accept this. But what followed is rather unacceptable, and a little unsettling.

This is the second time we've mentioned the influence of these mom bloggers here on the Digital Blogger, but it's apparent from the tone of the first entry that I was a little sceptical.

Well, consider me converted.

AdAge points the finger at two mom-bloggers who likely brought the whole Motrin campaign to its knees: Jessica Gottlieb, who writes for Silicon Valley Moms (and who admits blame), and Katja Presnal, owner of a kid-garb store, and have more than 5,000 Twitter followers between the two of them.

Presnal was responsible for the nine minute YouTube video calling for a Motrin boycott.

The two of them manage to rally their Twitter troops, here are a few of the offended excerpts, as reported by AP:

"Picking on new mothers is vile, it's as vulnerable as we will ever be and they should know better."

"I can't even count the ways I am offended right now. Taken aback! This is a serious screw up for such a major company."

"Wow Motrin, you REALLY messed up with that ad. No more Motrin for my family. MobileMommy."

"I credit a large portion of my children's happiness to baby wearing. thecouponcoup."

"NO to Motrin. Generic ibuprofen works for me! And wearing my son never gave me back pain. cutiebootycakes."

I doubt marketers ever thought they would have to atone to someone who traverses across social networking sites with a "cutiebootycakes" nametag, but in the end, Motrin conceded to the vocal minority.

On the Motrin website, VP of marketing for McNeil Consumer Healthcare, owner of the Motrin brand said: "With regard to the recent Motrin advertisement, we have heard you."

"We are parents ourselves and we take feedback from moms very seriously."

And like that the ad was snuffed.

Without wanting to spark a Brand Republic revolt, it has to be said that the Motrin Mom's took things too far. I can't say the ad wasn't offensive because I am not a mom, but I showed my mom and she confirmed that it was indeed, not offensive. But that doesn't matter.

What matters is that social networking has proven its influence from a marketing standpoint, in true form, and advertisers should, nay - must - take heed. The moms have spoken.