Online Spin Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2013 The Future Of Advertising Will Be... By Max Kalehoff “What will advertising look like in 2020?” That was the question posed to me by Jerry Wind, professor of marketing at The Wharton School, and head of Wharton’s Future of Advertising, an academic and industry group formed to understand and improve the future of that industry. I’m on the program’s advisory board, and this advertising 2020 question is the focus of a compilation of essays from more than 100 industry thought leaders. Here’s an abbreviated version of my response: 11 Big Trends That Will Reshape Advertising In 2020 And Beyond 1. Digital breadcrumbs will become the new research. Traditional market research — particularly representative sampling and self-reported survey techniques — will never go away. However, those methods will eventually become subservient to the gathering and interpretation of large universal data sets that don’t represent populations, but are actual populations. Some call this trend “big data” — as intelligence derived from digital breadcrumbs usually means working with very large data sets. If the wonk word “big data” goes away by 2020, all the better. 2. Social, CRM and advertising will collide. Facebook is demonstrating that it’s possible to integrate techniques of one-to-one CRM marketing with mass-media planning techniques like reach and frequency. And when you add social endorsement to the mix, you begin to achieve something unprecedented. In the future smart marketers will adopt a social-CRM-advertising model that embraces multiple social networks to create a master customer communications grid. In many cases, the social CRM database will become primary, while legacy internal databases become secondary. 3. “Digital marketing” will cease to exist. We’re all doing less “digital marketing.” Instead, we’re simply doing marketing in a digital world. This nuance will dictate your organization’s culture and marketing roadmap for the future. 4. Social-media marketing will cease to exist. Like digital marketing, we’ll soon all be doing less “social-media marketing.” Marketing and media are inherently social — to one degree or another. Social is simply an aspect of all the marketing we do. Social transcends everything. 5. Consolidation in ad tech will grow the ad-tech pie. We’re due for a large wave of consolidation among venture-backed ad-tech companies. That will be a good thing, because that sector is experiencing a tragedy of the commons: lots of noise, too many companies, not enough traction. Fewer companies will mean fewer choices and simpler decision-making for marketers, which will mean lower friction to spend more money in innovative ways on new platforms. Ad-tech consolidation will have the ironic outcome of creating a larger sector altogether. 6. That which can be commoditized will. One of the key lessons I’ve learned in building companies is that anything that could possibly become commoditized, will be commoditized. When a new technology or platform arrives, it’s easy to get carried away with its unique value and promise. Increasingly, fast followers will match you at alarming speed and one-up you. Success is determined not by who is first, but by those who arrive on time to execute and out-commoditize the rest. These become the advertising technologies and platforms that win. 7. Successful advertising will still be about service. The idea of “advertising as service” is nothing new. With unprecedented advertising clutter, there will be a growing premium on, and receptiveness to, marketers and messages that serve and deliver value. 8. Trusted intermediaries will rise to prominence. Until our intensive consumerism retreats, we can bet that a dizzying array of choice and noise will continue to rise. It’s a tax on our attention. Of course, this is why marketers argue for investing in their brands’ equity in the first place. However, to fight attention deficit and fatigue, consumers will increasingly look to trusted intermediaries to make better and faster choices. 9. Legal & privacy issues, as we debate them today, will go away. The speed and adoption of technological advancements prompts an interesting sequence of societal events: First, a life-changing technology arrives. Then, mass adoption comes over the next few years. Social norms gradually mutate. Laws trail new social norms by another few years. This creates a messy transition. We can be sure of one thing: Social norms and our notions of privacy are changing, and laws will eventually evolve to reflect them. 10. Trust will be everything. Social media and our real-time connections have prompted a new age of transparency and consciousness around values, motivations, behaviors and outcomes of institutions. Doing good marketing and advertising means embracing responsibility and accountability throughout your organization’s entire value chain. 11. We will contemplate more purpose & less strategy. What else matters if there’s not a decent world for our children? That’s why we could use less strategy and more purpose. If advertisers approached their business this way, our advertising industry — and our world — would become a far better place. These big trends will most certainly reshape advertising. However, one thing won’t change: our competitive spirit and mandate to win.

It's Award Season

Creative is still king. Philip Jay LeNoble, Ph.D. Author LENoble's Media Sales Insights Marketing Entertainment By Kristine Shine Friday, Feb. 22, 2013 This season’s must-watch film, “Argo,” tells the story of a group of content creators who took the media and utilized content to deliver a message that helped change the lives of those who some say would have died without their ability to make the “media the message.” The film and its characters, for many, delivered an “inside” look as to how media messages are delivered and digested by the general public in modern culture. For many years, media companies sold advertising and consumers digested, or actually hopefully digested a range of media images and messages. Today, in the ecosystem of content creators, the brands that we are all collaborating with have a unique opportunity to change the menu while still “serving up” the traditional favorites of display ads. They are designed to grab your attention, but we’re also able to add so much more to the menu. We’re able to create digestible media that is truly measurable; not just through the digital analytics that drive us all for accountability, but an even deeper relationship. It is content that grabs the attention of consumers and actually gets them to hit the “buy now” button, fill their cart with goods and check out; all motivated by this new recipe for consumer media consumption. Not only are we creating media that crosses new business verticals but various platforms, truly connecting all media in a way that is new and innovative. This paradigm shift finds commerce now playing a very complimentary role to content, as advertising has done for years; we see this in businesses across the spectrum – from success like the “Dollar Shave” video that went viral to lifestyle content that is filling mobile devices, tablets and computer screens. This redefining the relationship among advertising, content and commerce is going to be a progression that very quickly starts to fill video content sites and it will not be long before this method becomes the norm, rather than the subject of an opinion piece such as the one you read today. The true magic of where this all leads us to is the most powerful analytic of all; “is my product selling?” If one is to consider the multibillion-dollar infomercial business, it has been operating on this methodology, quite successfully for years. The opportunities in this new redefinition are limitless and in the same way that the right celebrities could power a successful infomercial (think Suzanne Somers’ enormous hit the “Thighmaster”), engaging content can power retail sales. And what consumer brand wouldn’t want to wrap itself around this powerful consumer dynamic; this is where advertising becomes a compliment to this engaging, transactional experience. For content creators, we are experiencing a new shift. We are creating content that actually engages and activates (capturing consumer attention and buying power in the same moment). There are very few opportunities to directly influence consumer behavior as clearly as this new paradigm. The brands that can capture the emotion, attention and activation of spending will be the brands that truly have cooked up the recipe for what is not only like “Argo may be this year’s Best Picture” but a new way to experience media – which is truly “award-worthy.”

Twitter Opens Up Advertising API

OnlineMediaDaily by Mark Walsh, Feb 20, 2013, 2:02 PM Twitter on Wednesday announced the long-awaited opening up of its Ads API, a step expected to expand advertising on the microblogging platform and accelerate the company’s revenue growth. In connection with the move, Twitter has named five launch partners that will initially provide the tools for creating and managing campaigns on the site: Adobe, Salesforce.com (which acquired Buddy Media), HootSuite, SHIFT and TBG Digital. “What this means is that as marketers, you’ll soon have the ability to work with our initial set of Ads API partners to manage Twitter Ad campaigns -- and integrate them into your existing cross-channel advertising strategies,”stated a blog post today by April Underwood, product manager, revenue, at Twitter. Software created by the Ads API partners should enable brands and agencies to develop and optimize campaigns that reach the target audience with the right message at the right time across desktop and mobile devices at scale. Twitter is following the same playbook that helped Facebook build its ad business, when it launched its own Ads API in 2009 and established a set of ad partners that now include the five companies chosen by Twitter. LinkedIn also introduced an Ads API program in November. TechCrunch last month predicted that Twitter would soon take the same step. Until now, marketers either had to use the company’s self-serve option or work with its direct sales force to place advertising. The process of making ad buys and tracking campaigns should now be more efficient. HootSuite, for example, said that in relation to Twitter opening up its Ads API, it would now allow brands to quickly buy, publish and analyze Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts from within its dashboard. Similarly, Salesforce.com announced a new Social Ads Platform for Twitter that will let clients run and manage Twitter campaigns in real time within its Marketing Cloud product. In addition, Twitter said its Certified Products Program would be expanded in the coming months to include ad products that integrate with the Ads API and improve marketing efficiency and ROI. The company has begun screening the next group of ad partners, which vendors can apply for here. For comparison, Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developer program, which encompasses expertise in ads, apps, analytics and brand pages, has grown to more than 300 partner firms.

Despite Cord Cutting, TV Dominates Advertising

MediaDailyNews by Wayne Friedman, Feb 21, 2013, 12:57 PM Pay-TV cord cutting will be minimal over the next several years. And while traditional TV viewership is in decline, TV will easily remain the most dominant platform for advertisers in years to come. "Even though some consumers are cutting the cord, reducing their subscriptions, or not subscribing when starting a new home, the impact to the pay TV industry over at least the next five years will be minimal," says PwC's Cord Cutting and the Second Screen report. PwC says there are multiple concerns about cord cutting, "cord trimming" and those who will never "cord" -- young viewers who never becoming pay TV subscribers. Still, TV will continue to have major sway. The company notes that TV advertising influences on those 18+ are 37% compared with newspapers at 11%; Internet; 6%; and mobile, 4%. Other research, from eMarketer, says TV remains the dominant platform for advertising at 39% market share versus 22% for the Internet. "While consumers are spending more of their media time on mobile and Internet-enabled devices, TV viewership remains strong... certain comedy and drama content, live sports, reality TV, award ceremonies, and other exclusive content remain largely real-time programming not conducive to time shifting," notes PwC. It also cites TV as a "communal activity that cannot easily be replaced." Still, estimates are that there will be a 0.9% TV viewership decline annually through 2017 due to increased online consumption of TV programming. Screen-screen activity continues to grow. For example, Internet-protocol TV (IPTV) ownership doubled in one year to 10.4% penetration in 2011 from 4.7% in 2010. PwC says almost half of American households own gaming consoles -- which are Internet-capable and can be used to stream TV content through multiple OTT options. Some 36 million Americans report watching video content on their mobile phones. Smartphone sales are forecast to grow to $141 billion by 2016 from $79 billion in 2011; and tablet sales are projected to grow to $100 million by 2016 from $28 billion in 2011.

Nielsen Redefines 'Television,' Will Include Internet-Only Connected Sets, Households

Media Daily News by Joe Mandese, Feb 22, 2013, 9:49 AM Nielsen began informing clients this week that it has officially decided to change the way it defines television to include non-traditional sources of TV viewing such as Internet-connected devices in its TV ratings sample households, and will make those changes effective with the start of the 2013-14 television season in September. The two most significant implications of those changes are that Nielsen will begin including Internet-only TV households in its sample, and will also start measuring viewing on Internet-connected TVs in its existing sample households. While Nielsen will also modify its official TV universe estimates as a result of the changes, executives said the impact will only be about six-tenths of a percentage point. The material impact on actual TV ratings and usage levels is expected to be small when the changes are made, but Nielsen executive said they need to make the changes now because the role of Internet-connected TV is likely to grow and become more of a factor in the future. “There is definitely a potential to have an impact, but we think it is only going to be about six-tenths of a [percentage point],” explains Brian Fuhrer, senior vice president-national & cross-platform product leader at Nielsen. “We don’t think it’s going to be dramatic.” Whatever the actual impact is on total TV viewing estimates, Fuhrer said it will not impact the official trading currency used by advertisers and agencies -- such as the so-called C3 ratings in national TV negotiations -- because Nielsen will be storing the data from the Internet-connected households and TVs in a “separate bucket.” The reason is that C3 ratings represent the television audience for the average of all commercial minutes, and that much of the viewing done via the Internet-connected TVs is to alternatives sources such as online video or Internet-based platforms like Hulu and Netflix that make TV programming available without their original commercial loads. One exception, he said, is alternative television delivery systems such as Comcast's Xfinity service, which provide conventional television programming and advertising via the Web. One of the most interesting aspects of the change is the fact that Nielsen will be including so-called “zero TV profile” households in its samples -- homes that don’t receive any traditional TV signals via terrestrial, satellite or cable TV. While they represent a small percentage of total viewing, and typically are either younger (college or post-college) or economically challenged households, their demographics and behaviors will be new to television audience measurement, and could represent valuable insights for the future as more homes become Internet-only connected. To date, Nielsen has been keeping records on such households it had contacted but bypassed in previous recruiting efforts, and will begin recontacting them to become part of the sample. Fuhrer said Nielsen will spend the next several weeks contacting customers and trade groups to explain the impact and implications of the changes, and he noted that some of them have wanted Nielsen to move faster on the changes, while others want Nielsen to move more slowly. He said Nielsen has been weighing both sides, but made the decision to redefine television now, because the changes manifesting in the way consumers actually watch television are moving so fast. He said another redefinition of television that would include viewing on wireless connected devices including smartphones, tablets and even TVs connected to wireless gadgets in the near future, but that no date has been set for that.

Should TV Networks Adopt Daily Viewer 'Check-ins'?

TV Watch A media critique by Wayne Friedman, Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013 Digital content businesses continue to seek customers who "check in" a couple of times a day to their areas. Should TV networks look to to do the same -- and can that activity be monetized? All TV networks have websites, Facebook and Twitter areas, and a growing array of mobile apps. Networks, however, don't have a long-term strategy in pursuing consumers to "check-in" multiple times a day, either via traditional or new digital platforms. Marissa Mayer, the relatively new CEO of Yahoo, believes success for the beleaguered 23-year-old company will come from satisfying what its occasional users requested: "Give me a reason to come back to Yahoo a few times a day." So Yahoo is now providing content that is continually updated. TV networks don't work the same way. Consumers devote bite-size moments of time to digital businesses like Yahoo, Facebook or Twitter. TV networks, on the other hand, require long-stretches of time -- typically 30 or 60 minutes -- to yield adequate revenue levels. One can go to the websites or digital areas of Fox News Channel, ABC News, NBC News, or CBS News. But TV networks with vast entertainment platforms are more than that. Still, one might wonder if network executives can figure out a way to get consumers to come back to their platforms -- traditional, digital, or otherwise -- for shorter periods of duration during the course of a day or night. Could this be the seed of new business? TV networks have made great gains in pursuing social media opportunities and other digital content. But, by themselves, many social media interactions aren't promising keys for monetization -- nor for boosting traditional TV viewing, according to some studies. On the other side of things, digital companies continue to have successes akin to the traditional media companies, who have mastered the art of big-time, large-scale entertainment for the masses. All media companies will continue to adjust their business formulas in order to grab more consumers making more check-ins and longer stays at their entertainment destinations.

What Is The Secret Of Effective Page Posts?

Media Post's Engage Men By Rob Jewell Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013 Remember the old adage? If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Consider the adage when you apply it to your Facebook strategy. For most businesses, setting up a Facebook brand page is almost mandatory in this age of social media. The benefits for setting up a brand page have been written up countless times, but at its core, the benefits a Facebook page can bring to brands include: •Express a brand’s identity: use the page to give a brand a personality by showcasing a persona through the posts and digital assets shared. •Allow a brand to build and foster relationships with a fan base: use the page to capture and grow an audience. •Create word of mouth at scale: create an engaged community that will allow fans to speak and become ambassadors for the brand. •Serve as a CRM platform: social media has usurped mail and phone as the only channels dedicated for customer service. Use the Facebook page to respond to questions, complaints, and compliments. When Facebook introduced Edge Rank, the algorithm that decides which stories appear in each user’s news feed by factoring affinity score, edge weight, and time decay, marketers were left to become even more creative in the types of posts to publish on a brand’s page, and to really ensure that the posts that are published are truly engaging. As creative spawns from page posts that are most effective ads for WOM at scale, below are eigh suggested recommendations for posting effective Facebook posts on your brand page that will foster engagement and activity from your community: •Be succinct: Studies have shown that the longer the post, the lower the engagement rate. Conversely, the shorter the post, the higher the engagement rate. We suggest keeping your posts on average to between 100 to 150 words. •Post regularly: The greater the frequency, the better the odds of sustaining visibility. Ideally, brands should post regularly, but don’t force it. It’s better to not post than post something that will alienate your community. •Post at optimal time: Depending on the brand’s core audience, you’ll want to publish your posts at are the most optimal times where your customers are most active on Facebook. Typically, we see early morning or late in the afternoon as the best times of the day to garner effective engagement. •Be relevant: This goes without saying but truly understand your audience is a key first step to understanding and knowing which types of content to post on a brand’s page. •Be seasonal and timely: For the most part, leverage current events and happenings in our posts, but above all else, always use a sense of sensibility in the approach, nothing considered tacky or in bad taste that will cause audience to unlike the page. •Visual impact: Photos, videos, images that feature bold visuals are more likely to yield engagement. For example, the Washington Post posted a panoramic view of the audience at the U.S. Capitol for the 2013 Presidential Inauguration and invited those in attendance to tag themselves. •One brand voice: Consistency is the key here and is tied back to showcasing a brand’s identity. Make the page feature a voice that is unchanging. •Give fans benefits: Timely promotions in the form of new product launches, exclusive offers and events, have been proven to be effective in sparking engagement and delivering added value to your audience.

Twitter Opens Up Advertising API

Media Post's Online Media Daily Thursday, Feb 21, 2013 Before you get into reading the essay below...the big news is that the majority of media company owners and manager are gaining momentum in their concern of the ongoing loss of revenue overall as a result of growing imcoming competition for their ad dollars. Local-direct sales training and concentration of resources in the arena of local-direct is paramount to survival. Today we witnessed the sale of the Boston Globe by the New York Times, their last remaining media outside their core media empire as a result of a ongoing decline in national ad revenue. The essay below affirms where ad dollars are going. by Mark Walsh, Yesterday, 2:02 PM Twitter on Wednesday announced the long-awaited opening up of its Ads API, a step expected to expand advertising on the microblogging platform and accelerate the company’s revenue growth. In connection with the move, Twitter has named five launch partners that will initially provide the tools for creating and managing campaigns on the site: Adobe, Salesforce.com (which acquired Buddy Media), HootSuite, SHIFT and TBG Digital. “What this means is that as marketers, you’ll soon have the ability to work with our initial set of Ads API partners to manage Twitter Ad campaigns -- and integrate them into your existing cross-channel advertising strategies,”stated a blog post today by April Underwood, product manager, revenue, at Twitter. Software created by the Ads API partners should enable brands and agencies to develop and optimize campaigns that reach the target audience with the right message at the right time across desktop and mobile devices at scale. Twitter is following the same playbook that helped Facebook build its ad business, when it launched its own Ads API in 2009 and established a set of ad partners that now include the five companies chosen by Twitter. LinkedIn also introduced an Ads API program in November. TechCrunch last month predicted that Twitter would soon take the same step. Until now, marketers either had to use the company’s self-serve option or work with its direct sales force to place advertising. The process of making ad buys and tracking campaigns should now be more efficient. HootSuite, for example, said that in relation to Twitter opening up its Ads API, it would now allow brands to quickly buy, publish and analyze Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts from within its dashboard. Similarly, Salesforce.com announced a new Social Ads Platform for Twitter that will let clients run and manage Twitter campaigns in real time within its Marketing Cloud product. In addition, Twitter said its Certified Products Program would be expanded in the coming months to include ad products that integrate with the Ads API and improve marketing efficiency and ROI. The company has begun screening the next group of ad partners, which vendors can apply for here. For comparison, Facebook’s Preferred Marketing Developer program, which encompasses expertise in ads, apps, analytics and brand pages, has grown to more than 300 partner firms.

Seven Mobile Marketing Trends To Watch In 2013

MediaPost's Blog by Alex Campbell, Yesterday, 10:17 AM Do you hear that collective sigh of relief? That's the sound of thousands of mobile professionals finally being able to tell people that “the year of mobile” is behind us. Mobile certainly had a great year in 2012 as smartphones continued to be consumers’ device of choice and app developers continued to take advantage of time, location, and interactivity. Apple's launch of Passbook was a great example of just how beneficial a mobile wallet can be when you embed it with time and location functionality. Retailers finally took notice of mobile and began thinking about how it plays a role in building shopper confidence. Consumers are now more than ever turning to their mobile devices as an impartial influencer of their buying decisions, and marketers must guide them through the process with seamless cross-channel and mobile-optimized experiences that are personal and individually engaging. It's clear that consumers are no longer just shopping with bags in hands -- they are bringing personal shopping assistants in the form of mobile phones to help them feel better about their purchases -- price, product reviews, alternative product selection, warranties and more. Smart marketers understand this shift and therefore leverage mobile as an effective channel to help achieve customer loyalty. In 2013, mobile will officially become the first screen of influence for many marketers rather than the second or third (sorry, TV -- but while you certainly know how to find a large audience, your days of trendsetting are not what they used to be). This will lead to a much stronger focus from marketers on the overall mobile experience. So how should brands be ready to successfully deploy mobile in the new year? Here are seven trends that mobile marketers must embrace in 2013. Passbook was just the start; Google Wallet is about to evolve. Google will update the storage functionality of Google Wallet to make it behave more like Apple’s Passbook. Rather than focus solely on the transaction side of the mobile wallet, Google Wallet will become an app where users can manage coupons and loyalty cards, as well as ticket and boarding passes. When this happens, the mobile wallet will be at scale. Marketers need to think about how the mobile wallet will affect the path to purchase and shopping behavior. Major payment companies like American Express will release square-like apps. The square app is innovating the payment world, which is awesome. But the thing that square lacks is scale and when it comes to payments, scale is really important. Any number of payment companies (such as Amex) would have enough penetration to allow consumers to use the app(s) wherever they go. I'm going with Amex because they have been much better at innovating than the other guys (that I won’t name). Marketers need to think about what happens when it gets much easier to use a phone to buy things offline. Amazon will launch same-day shipping everywhere. What does this have to do with mobile? Well, think about timing. If I can buy something using Amazon on my phone and have it when I get home from shopping, my phone just became a much more powerful tool for impulse buying. Mobile payments will become more fragmented. While the square app and LevelUP are cool, they need significant merchant penetration. This begs the question: How many payment apps will consumers use? Point-of-sale systems need to be much more flexible. This area of mobile is going to innovate quickly, so marketers need to make sure point of sale isn’t holding marketing back. Big data will play a significant role in retail shopping. Yeah -- I’m as sick of the “big data” term as anyone, but I love Safeway’s “just for U” program. It’s a great case study about how to use big data effectively, and it only really scratches the surface of what you can do. Mobile is a great outlet for all this big data because you can target a single personal consumer digitally. Big data will help bring big scale to mobile. Google will create an Ad ID -- which, along with Apple's IDFA, will be linked to offline purchases and big data. Apple solved the cookie problem, now it's Google's turn. Now that tracking effectiveness via mobile Web is fixed, it's time to start linking offline purchases to online and mobile engagement. Omnichannel marketing will begin to take shape. TV marketing will be intentional about engaging and transacting through mobile, and there will be landing pages for TV and print ads just like there are online. One result of this will be an even more vocal fight about attribution, although advertising is still receiving most of the marketing spending. One thing is for sure -- mobile will continue to advance in 2013 at a pace no slower than it did in 2012. It will become more embedded into our daily lives and will become consumers’ primary source for information and social relationships (sorry, baby boomers, it’s true -- I’m sure you see this as the fabric of life eroding). Marketers who use mobile effectively will find that it really does change the game and that it really does allow you to have a direct relationship with all of your customers. Mobile is about to become even more advanced. And I, for one, welcome our new marketing overlord.

Adap.tv's New Technology Could Draw TV Crowd to Online Video

MediaPost's RTM Daily by Tyler Loechner, 54 minutes ago Adap.tv last week announced In-Target Audience Optimization, a technology that allows advertisers to deliver ads to the right demographics with the help of Nielsen Online Campaign Ratings and comScore Validated Campaign Essentials. Perhaps most importantly, Toby Gabriner, president, Adap.tv, believes that In-Target Audience Optimization will draw advertisers in from TV. He says that there is now a "currency that can attract the TV buyers into [the online video] world." The technology allows for TV-like targeting from sellers and more targeted audiences for buyers. Gabriner also says there's an important connect to be made between the new technology, the draw of TV advertisers, and programmatic buying. "It really helps to demonstrate the power of programmatic, which is starting to really gain traction as a buying and selling mechanism," he said. The new technology could draw TV advertisers to online video because it's now a more familiar model. "Historically, there has been a challenge around the currency that they should be using. This helps to solve for that," Gabriner said. In addition, Gabriner says that the TV community can optimize effectively in the digital space, something that isn't possible when they buy TV. Using benchmarked data from their partnership with Nielsen and comScore, Gabriner says Adap.tv can give accurate forecasts "before the first impression." If those expectations are not met, it alerts the people behind the process in real-time so that optimization can start to occur, something people in the TV world often have to wait weeks for. In beta, ad delivery saw a 30% boost when using In-Target Audience Optimization. That's a promising number, and if the floodgates open and TV advertisers make their way online, there will be a massive increase in dollars spent on online video. The RTB process will heat up and the "little guy" will have to get extra creative. It hasn't happened yet, but if the "power of programmatic" - as Gabriner put it - is strong enough to pull TV advertisers online, it's powerful enough to do anything.

Andrew Sobel, on the power of asking questions

I found an essay which also has crossover potential for media account eecutives who want to look the best in front of their clients or prospective clients. Phiip Jay LeNoble, Ph.D. Author, LeNoble's Media Sales Insights Smart Blog on Leadership Careers, General Management By Brooke Howell on February 5th, 2013 Andrew Sobel is published widely on client loyalty and capabilities required to build trusted business relationships, including his first book, the best-selling “Clients for Life.” In addition to “Power Questions,” his other books include “Making Rain” and the award-winning “All for One: 10 Strategies for Building Trusted Client Partnerships.” Sobel has more than 30 years of experience as a senior-management consultant, an executive educator and a coach. I recently spoke with him about the power of questions in business. Plenty of people talk a lot in an effort to demonstrate their knowledge. How does asking questions and listening instead make one appear smarter? You’re sitting at a dinner party. One guest never stops talking. He’s obviously very smart and has traveled extensively around the world. He’s happy to take on any issue that comes up in the conversation, and he’s never at a loss for words. And no one else can get a word in edgewise. A second guest is quieter but very interested in you. She asks several thoughtful questions about your work and your experiences, such as “Why did you decide to take that job?” and “How did you get your start in your business?” You actually have an interesting, give-and-take conversation with her. She’s also had a lot of interesting experiences, but she doesn’t wear them on her sleeve or dominate the conversation talking about them. Which guest have you found endearing and charming? Which of the two is most thoughtful? More importantly, which one would you like to spend more time with? When you ask thoughtful questions you supercharge your conversations. Power questions actually give power to the other person — power to talk about what’s important to them, power to lead the conversation where they want it to go, power to express their thoughts more clearly than ever before. A good question can get to the heart of the real issue. It helps you understand the other person’s goals and aspirations. It enables the other person to reach their own conclusions. It reframes the problem. It inspires commitment. For example: the simple question “What’s the best way for us to spend this time together?” creates commitment. If you find your mind wanders easily, how can you learn to focus and become the sort of listener that power questions require? Good listening, above all, requires curiosity. If you’re not genuinely curious about others, why would you listen to them? To listen well also requires mindfulness. That’s where you are focused entirely on the moment, and you refrain from passing judgment on what’s being said. It helps to get your body language aligned with the other person: Look them in the eye, glancing away periodically, and face towards them in your chair. If you take notes, it helps you focus. But don’t take so many notes that it’s distracting. While the other person is talking, drop your own agenda, listen and then synthesize. “So it sounds like there are really two separate issues going on here …” How does asking questions help you to build trust with others? One of the key elements of trust is believing the other person is focused on your agenda and your needs, not just their own interests. Trust, after all, can be defined as “the belief that you will meet my expectations of you.” When you ask good questions, it shows you are focused on the other person’s agenda, not yours, and that you are interested in understanding them and their issues — and so they help build trust. Remember, though, that it’s essential to be genuine and authentic when you ask questions. Otherwise, you may sound like the telemarketer who says, with obvious insincerity, “How are you this evening?” as soon as you pick up the phone. Can you suggest a few good questions people can use at networking events where they don’t know anyone and explain why they work well? Good ice-breaking questions get the conversation started. They encourage the other person to talk. They refer to current events or happenings. They are not personally intrusive or inappropriate (e.g., “That’s a gorgeous dress!” When you first meet, never make comments about someone’s clothing or appearance, especially when it’s someone of the opposite sex). For example, these questions can all help break the ice and get the conversation started: •What’s your connection with this event? •What’s your connection with the host? •Where have you come in from? •Did you have as much trouble getting here as I did? Some traffic! •So, what sort of work do you do? Once you’re into a conversation, you can go deeper with questions like these: •Where did you grow up? Do you still have family there? Do you ever go back? •What’s a typical workday like for you? •How did you end up in … (finance, marketing, law, medicine, etc.)? •What parts of your job do you enjoy the most? The least? •So when you’re not shaking things up at work, how do spend your free time? What is the most powerful question a person can ask? What question do you most like to be asked? The most powerful question varies according to the situation. For example, “Why do you want to do that?” can be a very powerful question in a professional setting that helps you get at the higher-level goal or need that is driving someone. But in a different context, “Why?” could seem critical or carping — for example, asking a teenager, “Why did you do that?” I’m not that different than many other people. I like to be asked about my dreams, aspirations, and passions. About what motivates me. About why I do what I do.

How analytics will help marketers succeed at mobile coupons

MCommerce Daily By Lauren Johnson February 7, 2013 Marketers are using a variety of factors such as location to target mobile coupons. However, lack of personalization from not using analytics is causing some brands to fall behind. As consumers increasingly turn to their mobile devices to help scout out offers and deals, mobile coupons have gotten to a point where they need to be contextually relevant so that they can scale. Smart brands have a trove of data that they can use to make mobile coupon efforts more effective. “There is a lot of talk and excitement in the industry around geo-location and coupons,” said Patrick Moorhead, vice president for mobile at Catalina Marketing, St. Petersburg, FL. “We believe that geo-location is a great opportunity, but it’s really just a component of personalization,” he said. “Location is a type of personalization, but it really becomes impactful when combined with other personalization criteria, namely past purchase behavior.” “A coupon for frozen pizza in the parking lot of the store is cool. A coupon for my favorite brand and favorite toppings while I am on my way into the store is something I can use.” According to Mr. Moorhead, analytics are not playing a big enough role with how marketers target mobile offers because the majority of couponing apps and efforts appeal to a wide group of users. Offers within these apps only reflect a small spectrum of what a brand or retailer is interested in promoting. One of the ways that brands can more effectively target consumers is by using a shopper’s purchase history. The ultimate goal behind using these types of mobile offers is two-fold – consumers save money and time with relevant offers and retailers are able to target more effectively by taking the guesswork out of which offers are most useful. When it comes to types of analytics that marketers should be looking for, scale of distribution, sales impact, incrementality and redemption rate all still need be considered. However, these metrics may only be important when looked at in conjunction with other factors. “For example, it may not be enough to simply consider scale of distribution without looking at the consumer make-up of that scale,” Mr. Moorhead said. “Reaching a somewhat smaller audience of your best consumers is certainly more preferable – and profitable – than reaching tons of consumers who will never buy your product,” he said. “We also are looking at the value of multiple impressions an offer has across all our networks – in-store, online and mobile. We’ve noticed that unlike many traditional print coupons, multiple impressions of a mobile coupon may actually have a favorable impact on overall redemption, especially when it comes to personalized offers. We are testing this hypothesis on our mobile commerce solution currently and look forward to sharing our insights and findings when we know more.” Payment and loyalty Recently, a Merkle executive at the 2013 Mobile Marketing Association Forum San Francisco said that redemption rates can be as high as 89 percent the first time that a consumer receives a mobile coupon from a brand. From there, ongoing redemption rates can be around 25-40 percent (see story). This shows how mobile coupons can be alluring to consumers at first. The trick though is to keep the conversation going with tailored, personalized offers that continue to generate high redemption rates. According to Alex Campbell, co-founder/chief innovation officer at Vibes, Chicago, mobile coupons lessen the impact that an offer has on a retailer’s margin because they are customizable. For example, if a retailer knows that it will only take a five percent coupon to drive a loyal consumer in-store versus a mass coupon that is sent out for 10 percent off, the retailer saves money while also making the offer more customized. Although there are numerous challenges around mobile payments, there is a significant opportunity for marketers to ultimately combine coupons and payment. Take Apple’s Passbook, for example. The technology serves as a mobile wallet to let consumers save passes and offers but is also triggered by location to alert consumers when they are near a store and can redeem an offer. Location is a big indication of intent and combined with real-time information, retailers can mix up a mobile offer with dynamic content, such as current inventory. “We’re in the process of developing technology that will allow you to dynamically update a pass based on factors like how close someone is to a store – sometimes if you’re farther away from a store you need more incentive to drive the distance,” Mr. Campbell said. “We’re also working on technology that can change offers based on available inventory,” he said. “Knowing a consumer’s price elasticity for certain items allows a marketer to create the perfect offer – one that saves the consumer money on something they care about and reduces the margin hit for the retailer,” he said. Wading through the mess Another challenge around using data in conjunction with mobile coupons is knowing what information a retailer actually has to more effectively target a user in the future. “To get the right coupon to the right consumer at the right time, marketers need access to an immense amount of user-level data to target correctly,” said Craig Davis, CEO/founder of Relevvant, San Francisco. “Beyond that, organizing and understanding the data is paramount,” he said. Compared to the massive amount of prep time that goes into the marketing for paper coupons, one of the advantages of mobile is less lead time to develop programs and campaigns, meaning that if marketers have real-time access to data, a campaign can be changed on the fly. “With 92.5 million people in the U.S. redeeming digital coupons in the past year, there is an undeniable trend towards touching the consumer closer to the register,” said Brandon Young, managing director of marketing analytics at Accenture Interactive, New York. “Companies need to take advantage of this plethora of data to offer consumers value-add content in real-time that is highly targeted, to ultimately drive greater purchasing power.”

I have long felt the Boomer Generation are the largest demographic to move throughour society in more than 5 decades and still represent a great financial growth factor to businesses in the U.S. Below is another confirmation of my belief. Philip Jay LeNoble, Ph.D. Author, LeNoble's Media Sales Insights MediaPost's Engage Boomers By Mark Bradbury Thursday, Feb. 7, 2013 Ah, the sacred traditions of Valentine’s Day: flowers, candy hearts, and, if you’re a Baby Boomer, perhaps romance after divorce. That’s right, Baby Boomer divorce is occurring at historically high rates, and this provides marketers with opportunities sweeter than a heart-shaped box of chocolates. Over 20 million single Boomers represent a vast, lucrative market for a wide range of dating-related products and services. Boomers are 68% more likely to be divorced than the generation before them, and they account for one out of every two divorces in the United States. While it’s standard to have a negative perspective on divorce, pragmatic reasons enable Boomers to have a different view. •For starters, Boomers expect to live longer and with more vitality than previous generations. At 50, a Boomer will likely live another 30 or more years. As children leave home and Boomers retire, they may find that the changing needs and desires of their second adulthood no longer fit a marriage entered into at an earlier stage of life. •Divorce doesn’t have to cause the financial strain it once did. Many Boomers have accumulated significant wealth, enabling Boomer couples to divorce while leaving both parties financially secure. Additionally, six in ten married Boomer women are employed; for them, financial security is not an impediment to separation. •Finally, 35% of Boomers believe marriage is becoming obsolete and many see divorce not as a tragic ending, but merely as one step in a transition to the next stage of life. This allows them to leave a marriage with less emotional wreckage than was experienced by previous generations. In fact, many Boomers maintain good relationships with their ex-spouses. Benefitting from a more positive approach to becoming single, Boomers are readily getting back in the game. They account for one-quarter of online dating service users. Among the online population, single Boomers are 20% more likely than their younger counterparts to have used an online dating service in the last month. A host of 50+ online dating sites have been popping up over the last decade, among them ourtime.com, over50match.com, seniormatch.com, silversingles.com, and singleandover50.com. In addition, general-population dating sites are directly targeting the older market. Lavalife launched Lavalife Prime for people 45 and older, and HowAboutWe offers discounts to people age 50 and over. Marketers are beginning to realize that online dating is just the starting point. The courting game takes money. Looking your best, treating your date to a night on the town, preparing for a night of intimacy … it all adds up. Single Boomers have the disposable income to really make an impression—they earn 51% greater income than younger singles. Just consider all of the products and services they will invest in when seeking a potential mate: Appearance •clothing, shoes, accessories •jewelry, watches •perfume, cologne •beauty and haircare products •cosmetic procedures •salon services •diet programs, gym memberships Entertaining •alcohol •food •music •home furnishings •home entertainment (electronics, Netflix, music) Dating •dating services, technology (smartphones, tablets) •new cars •restaurants •movie, theater, museum, sport and other event tickets •vacations, weekend getaways (hotels, spas, car rental, train and airfare, cameras) Gifts •flowers •jewelry •candy Intimacy •lingerie, underwear •bedding, towels •sex-related items So, what’s the best way to woo a demographic looking for new love? You can’t speak to Boomers as you would a younger singles market. Boomers aren’t necessarily looking for someone to marry, and they aren’t looking for someone to have children with. They are looking for companionship, perhaps a lifelong partner, and, with past marriages and long-term relationship experience to draw from, they have a much better sense of what they want in a partner. They need less guidance in choosing a partner, and more guidance on how dating opportunities may have evolved while they were raising their families. If you want them to pay attention, make sure they know you understand their dating needs and have solutions that help them find the partners and develop the relationships they are looking for at this stage of their life. So, this Valentine’s Day, take a tip from an older, but no less romantic, Cupid. Target 50+ singles, take careful aim, and you’ll end up with results that you’re gonna love.

TV Is No Longer Simply A Device - It's An Experience

MediaPost's TV News Daily: Online Spin by Cory Treffiletti, 9 hours ago At the San Francisco Bay Area Interactive Group meeting last week, David Verklin (formerly of Canoe Ventures and Carat North America, currently with Calera Capital) discussed the future of our industry. Much of his focus was on the paradigm shifting as a result of other “sensors” creating new sources of data, while providing new avenues for ad delivery. His statement “Television is no longer a device, it is an experience,” got me thinking about how TV, as it is referred to by viewers younger than 18, will potentially drive the delivery of ad messaging across a number of platforms for many years to come. For the last 18 years or so, the innovation in the advertising industry has come from the Internet. There is absolutely no debating this fact. During this period, some proclaimed the death of television, but that was myopic. Television has not died. As a matter of fact, the money going into TV advertising continues to rise, CPMs continue to increase, and TV is still the basis for most water-cooler discussions. If anything, the Internet has made some TV shows stronger hits by being a forum for viewers to share opinions on their favorite shows. TV is not dead, but it is most certainly evolving. Talk to someone over the age of 18 or 25, and they’ll delineate a line between Internet video and television. Talk to someone under that age range, and they’ll say they’re watching TV, even if they’re viewing it on an iPad or iPhone. They do not delineate the difference -- it’s all one single experience to them. As publishers come to realize this, they’re also starting to realize video is the primary content vehicle that will drive the monetization of these new, mobile-focused platforms. Video -- or TV -- content will be consumed more and more on these devices, and the ad format will drive the monetization of these platforms as well. This means TV could become the source for innovation in the development of new ad formats that will provide marketers with a way to deliver targeted messages. Whether it’s a new format or new pricing models, TV content on mobile devices could become the most important ad battleground of the next 10 years! Of course I’m not 100% willing to concede the future of innovation to the TV publishers. While they’re certainly coming into their own, they’re woefully behind in understanding how to put these models into action. The underlying challenge there is data. TV platforms need a massive infrastructure change in order to enable audience buying using data, within video content. While you can currently use audience data to provide a better understanding of who your audience is, the execution of TV buys is a manual process with limited, if any, ability to truly deliver a segmented audience buy on existing TV platforms for cable and network TV. So what does this all mean? It means our business is starting to work collaboratively with the TV business. It’s becoming clear the Internet has achieved its seat at the table from a strategy perspective -- and if you fast-forward just a couple of years, you can see the Internet as the infrastructure behind all media planning and buying, including TV. It’s nice to have some validation, but don’t rest on your laurels. This is when things get really interesting. Don’t you agree?

Marketing To Baby Boomer And Senior Customers - Part II

MediaPost's Engage: Boomers By Jim Gilmartin Monday, Feb. 4, 2013 In our last post, we shared some insights learned from more than 20 years of helping clients understand better the Baby Boomer and senior customer mind, and successfully secure and retain customers 48 years of age and older. The following provides traditional and online marketers’ more insights into understanding better older customers. 1.Motivations do not originate in the conscious mind. The conscious mind is the executive officer that, like a corporate CEO, makes decisions on needs that have been framed at lower levels. Neurologist Richard Restak states in The Brain Has a Mind of Its Own, “We have reason to doubt that full awareness of our motives may be possible.” Adds brain researcher Bernard Baars in In the Theater of the Brain, “Our inability to report intentions and expectations simply reflect the fact that they are not qualitatively conscious.” Marketing Implication: Answers customers give researchers about their motivations are often incomplete or off the mark simply because people can only speculate about their motivations at deepest levels of the psyche. Creators of product messages need to become more intimately familiar, than is typical, with the “hidden drivers” of customers’ behavior about which they have little explicit knowledge. These drivers tend to be stage-of-life specific. For example, young people generally have stronger outer-directed motivations relating to social status than younger customers. As they age Baby Boomer and senior customer’s motivations tend to be qualitatively more experiential and less materialistic than younger people’s motivations. 2.People use different brain sites and mental processes in answering researchers’ hypothetical questions than they use in real-life situations. Research respondents tend to draw more heavily on the objective sequential reasoning of the left brain than on the subjective emotional right brain in answering researchers’ questions. This bias is reversed in favor of the right brain in reacting to product messages and making buying decisions. Marketing Implication: We can improve research results by techniques that are more effective in defining customers’ implicit testimonies that have not been distorted by undue influence from left-brain processing. The recent trend toward studying customers in their natural living and shopping environments is justified by the finding that people process hypothetical information differently than they do real-life information. Researchers need to make more use of indirect techniques to get behind the curtains of consciousness. 3.Brain development is lifelong. How people mentally process information changes from one decade of life to the next. This alters how people view and connect with the external world (worldview). Language style preferences also change over time. For example, youth and young adults generally have a more assertive language style than Baby Boomer and senior customers. Marketing Implication: Product messages will be more effective when expressed in the stage-of-life language style of the core market to which you primarily address the message. 4.Adolescent brains are significantly inferior to adult brains in reading facial expressions. The older people are, the more skilled they generally are at reading facial expressions. Marketing Implication: Product messages depicting people should reflect awareness the core audience’s ability to read facial expressions. For instance, older people’s greater sensitivity to facial expressions means that facial expressions should bear authentic connection to the product and product message in Baby Boomer and senior customer markets. Younger customers will generally be more concerned with what people are doing than with what their faces are saying. 5.As midlife (40+) approaches, people increasingly draw on right-brain functions. They begin relying less on left-brain sequential reasoning and more on emotions – a.k.a., “gut feelings” or intuition. Marketing Implication: Product messages for people over 35 should have more affect (emotional toning) than product messages for younger people. Under 35, people tend to have a stronger reasoning bias, thus product messages generally should implicitly or explicitly promote concrete reasons for purchase. 6.Information entering the brain’s cortex (outer layers) is first processed mostly in the right brain. The right brain processes information as sensory images rather than as words and numbers. The left brain works in numbers and words. Marketing Implication: To arouse the strongest attention, product messages should be rich in sensory stimuli. Even though the right brain can’t process words, words can create sensory images, as every storyteller knows. The older a market, the more important it is to present a product in story form. 7.Emotion, not reason, is the final arbiter in decision-making. Initial responses to information entering the brain are visceral. Changes in body states (e.g., pulse, hormonal flow, saliva flow, body temperature, etc.) generate emotions. When a matter fails to generate emotions, a person will not take action on it. (Brain patients who have lost their emotional abilities while retaining full powers of comprehension and reasoning cannot make advantageous decisions in which they have a personal stake in the outcome.) Marketing Implication: A cardinal rule for developing effective product messages is go with the grain of the brain or “Lead with the right; follow with the left.” The only way to get into a person’s conscious mind is via the right brain. Again, the use of sensory images is a key to getting into the right brain. The differences in customer motivations and decision processes between customers in the first and second half of life boggle many marketers who have yet to figure out how to market to older customers. The young are easier to analyze and sell to. Now, with adults over the age of 40 in the majority, marketers are being compelled to figure out their values and behavior.

Tablets To Rival Desktop For Video Viewing: Welcome To Personal TV

MediaPost's MoBlog by Steve Smith, Feb 1, 2013, 9:06 AM There seems to be a gusher of post-holiday, well, gushing, around the tablet. Since it proved to be the consumer electronic gift of choice this past season, all eyes are on the in-between screen as an even more promising marketing and e-commerce platform than the smartphone itself. As we report today, IDC's estimates are that 52 million units moved worldwide in Q4. The other day Martini Media CEO Skip Brand argued for a tablet-specific search strategy. I wrote the other day on consumer willingness to spend via their tablets. And market intelligence service TDG reminds us this week that all of those tablets will have to have some overall effect on media mind and time shares. In a new report the group boldly predicts that by 2017 U.S. tablet owners will view 58 billion hours of video on these devices, well beyond the 38 billion hours of total video viewed in 2011 online and via over the top (OOT) boxes connected to TVs. This 58 billion hours still pales by comparison to the 520 billion hours viewed via TV. TDG is basing the projection on accelerated tablet sales, the likelihood of multiple tablets in the house, and evolving video viewing patterns. They believe that by 2017 65% of U.S. households will have tablets and that the number of tablets per household will double. “A significant shift in American media consumption is underway,” says TDG Senior Analyst Bill Niemeyer. As much as tablet dweebs like me like to talk about the potential of "second screen" interactivity with the TV screen, I recognize that only a small share of consumers are bothering with these full-bore second-screen app experiences. Our columnist and Executive Director, Marketing of the Media Behavior Institute Mike Bloxham had a good post on this the other day. In talking with focus groups about their use of devices in tandem with other media, Mike discovered a surprising lack of awareness and interest in TV-related apps. My guess is this is quite right. As much as I like the idea of these apps, and consult them during major TV events to check the insta-zeitgeist, they actually take more focus and endurance than most users care to devote when, after all, they are in relaxation mode. This is less the case with show devotees who appreciate the ancillary content, constant stream of like-minded chatter, and annotations. For most TV viewing, however, the second-screen experience is good for a drive-by check in. In the beautifully crafted Zeebox app, for instance, I like the idea of the pop-up tags related to actors and mentions in the show, but I rarely use them. Hey, I like "Downton Abbey" and all that, but "Gravity’s Rainbow" it ain’t. It's not as if I need an annotated companion. Which is all to underscore the implication of TDG’s research, that the tablet’s biggest impact in the home may be as an alternate TV screen rather than as a second screen. Clearly the MSOs know this, since already we see the likes of Comcast and Dish porting their VOD offerings and cross-screen functionality to the tablet apps. While the TV networks and mobile start-ups were the first-in when it came to TV apps, the cable and satellite providers have considerable leverage in the hardware itself. I suspect that one of the longer-term effects tablets will have on TV consumption patterns will be in personalization and portability. For decades the TV experience has been married to a room and often communal viewing. Even when viewing was solo (in bedrooms and such) the technology was the same as in the living room. True portability untethers TV from a place and from the communal experience. Imagine the added services that an MSO, who controls the fat pipe, could make of that with a little creativity.