Spot TV Finally Gets Credit For DVR Viewing

TVNewsCheck, March 27, 2013 While there’s still some resistance from media buyers, live-plus-same-day ratings for local measurement finds growing acceptance in top markets. Today, according to TVB, about 75% of ad buys in Nielsen’s top 25 markets with Local People Meters markets are negotiated using live-SD ratings. “At a bare minimum, we believe that local viewing should be measured including DVR viewership,” says Valari Staab, president of NBC Owned Television Stations. “Our local measurement should reflect the way people watch TV today.” By Kevin Downey In 2010, Nielsen tried to replace the live-only ratings for buying spot TV in top markets with live-plus-same-day (live-SD) ratings for spot TV, figuring it was time that TV stations began getting some credit for viewership of programming on DVRs just as the networks did. The move produced an immediate backlash from media agencies not yet ready to give such credit (or pay for it). They forced Nielsen to change its plans. To keep peace, it decided to issue both sets of ratings. But since then, broadcasters have slowly worn the down the buyers, persuading increasing numbers to accept the live-SD data. Today, according to TVB, about 75% of advertising buys in Nielsen’s Top 25 markets with Local People Meters markets are negotiated using live-SD ratings. The markets account for 49% of all TV homes, and a disproportionate 57% of spot TV ad dollars. “About three years ago, I’d venture to guess that 10% of agencies were using live-plus-same-day ratings,” says TVB CEO Steve Lanzano, who has been leading the charge to get buyer buy-in on the new ratings. “Now, they’re all moving toward live-plus-same-day.” Left on the outside are the hundreds of stations outside the Top 25 markets. In these smaller markets, viewership is still measured by a combination household meters and diaries or diaries only, neither of which are capable of producing live-SD ratings. “This is really only pertinent to the LPM markets,” Lanzano says. Live-SD ratings take into account time-shifted viewing, which adds bonus ratings to broadcasters’ live ratings. In LPM markets in 2012, the average live-SD rating in broadcast primetime among adults 25-54 was 13% higher than live-only ratings. Buyers say they have also been convinced by the reliability of the live-SD data. “Where people have netted out, as DVR penetration increases and viewing expands across multiple days, most people have lined up with live-same-day ratings because it’s stable,” says Maribeth Papuga, EVP and director of local investment at MediaVest. “The audience in live-only continues to shrink. And when you’re at low ratings the instability makes it more and more difficult to project ratings because there’s so much more delayed viewing.” Lanzano says that opposition to live-SD ratings has eased as live-SD ratings have begun to align with C3 ratings. The gap between live-SD primetime ratings and C3 ratings in LPM markets has been shrinking among adults 25-54, from 14% in 2010 to 9% last year. At the same time, the gap between live-only and C3 ratings has been increasing, from 5% to 11% in 2012. “Looking at the numbers and comparisons to C3, live-same-day is closer to C3 than live-only ratings,” says Lanzano. “We are out there meeting with agencies, showing this research and meeting with our members.” Not every media agency is going along with live-SD. “You’re getting an inflated number when you buy a live-same-day rating,” says Ellen Drury, president of local broadcast at GroupM. “Any time you have delayed viewing there is commercial avoidance. In local, these are quarter-hour program ratings. It’s not like national, where it’s minute-by-minute ratings where you can get the commercial rating.” Broadcasters see live-SD ratings as the least the buyers can do. “We are pushing for live-plus ratings for a lack of a better metric at the moment,” says Larry Wert, president of broadcast media at Tribune Company. “We just want to get paid for commercials that are viewed. Live-only falls short of that. We can’t get C3 numbers locally, but live-plus-sae-day comes close to C3.” “At a bare minimum, we believe that local viewing should be measured including DVR viewership,” says Valari Staab, president of NBC Owned Television Stations. “Our local measurement should reflect the way people watch TV today.” There is a significant amount of time-shifted viewing taking place in local markets, particularly the top markets. Nationally, each month nearly 160 million people watch time-shifted TV, up 11% in fourth quarter 2012 from a year earlier. In the first six weeks of the 2012-13 broadcast season, 24% of live-same-day viewing in Nielsen’s LPM markets was time shifted, compared to 20% nationally, according to a TVB analysis of Nielsen ratings. If all deals in the first six weeks this TV season were done with live-only ratings in the top 25 markets, advertisers would have gotten a bonus 140 million primetime impressions among adults 25-54, TVB says. “We know not everyone skips commercials,” says a national sales rep who asked for anonymity. “And not everyone watches all the commercials. But if we’re talking about millions of viewers and, say 45% watch the commercials during playback, live-only ratings miss a lot. That’s shortchanging the broadcasters by millions of viewers.” There’s also a practical reason to agree a single currency in the top markets, says the rep. Having multiple data streams is costly to store. And it’s difficult to churn out all the data needed when sellers are working with ad agencies that use different data streams. It’s easier if there’s a standard,” he says. “We have a research department that supplies information to our salespeople. They produce a lot of information. They just simply cannot do multiple streams. So, my salespeople are going to agencies with data that’s different from their standards.” Alan Picozzi, VP and director of research at rep firm Petry Television, hopes that national TV’s likely move from C3 ratings to C7 ratings in the near future may spark the local TV business to hurry up and settle on live-SD. “The momentum always comes from national,” he says. “There is momentum to move beyond C3. I just want one official stream.”

National Brands Need To Market Local Or Bow To Small Business

Marketing Daily Commentary by Debora Lance, Mar 25, 2013, 9:12 AM Large brands have historically enjoyed an advantage over small businesses because of their ability to build awareness and drive sales with national advertising that reached a large audience at the best advertising rates. Although today’s consumer spends 4% more time on media, as revealed in a study by eMarketer last year, their attention is divided among different media channels, platforms and devices. In addition, consumers use more than 10 sources on their path to purchase -- an increase of 50% from just three years ago, according to Google's 2012 ZMOT Study. It seems that this increased complexity would benefit large brands, but according to a report released in February 2013 by the Chief Marketing Officer Council, only 29% of national brand marketers say they have a “reasonably effective” program in place to activate local audiences. For large brands with multiple locations or service-based industries, this failure to activate local audiences could translate into a competitive advantage for small businesses. Here’s why. Today, local businesses can easily run highly targeted mobile and digital campaigns because companies such as Yelp, YP, Dex and SuperMedia have developed turnkey solutions that deliver high-quality traffic/leads with little advertiser effort. In addition, mobile geo-search enables small businesses that may not have a Web site or advertising budget to garner traffic from customers who are looking for a business that is nearby. Finally, small businesses are more nimble, which enables them to more easily evaluate and respond to user reviews and deliver localized, relevant, and timely content. For large brands, customizing content and reviews for each location is cumbersome, labor-intensive and cost-prohibitive. The challenges associated with fragmentation will continue to increase, so in order to be successful, national brands need to shift both strategy and focus to a localized approach. This method requires advertisers and their agencies to deliver highly relevant, localized content that resonates with their target audience, thereby leading to higher conversion rates. And although individual campaigns might be relatively small, powerful results are achieved as the campaign grows in both complexity and reach. Solutions vary by the advertisers’ business structure and goals. It is easy to test small, local campaigns. First, agencies and advertisers need to work closely together to define campaign objectives and determine how performance will be measured -- especially online/offline. Next, advertisers must be willing to trial new opportunities, adapting and changing campaigns and/or vendors if performance is not acceptable. Finally, it is important to pinpoint partners who are experienced in delivering performance-based campaigns that execute at the local store/agent/dealer-level, with the goal of driving business to the location by a click, phone call, or walk-in. Successes can be modeled out to fit the national footprint, ultimately resulting in campaigns that are compelling, relevant (nearby) and fulfill an immediate consumer need.

Is Your Sales Engine Working?

Sales and Marketing Management It's time to effectively evaluate your sales process Tue, 03/12/2013 by Dustin Sapp The sales pipeline is the lifeblood of any business. It’s a well-known fact: organizations live and die by the numbers, regardless of the product, service or solution. So, the defining question for any company is: Is your sales engine working? There are consultants, managers, technologies and teams of sales reps already at work in your organization. So, it’s time to take a moment to take a fresh look at how everything’s actually coming together. How do you do that? Start with four straightforward questions to pinpoint inefficiencies. If you answer, “yes” to any one of these questions, your sales process could be broken and ineffective: Is my technology dated? If you’re using Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, or Excel spreadsheets to directly communicate with your prospects, you could be losing valuable time, as well as failing to capture the full conversation. Often, Word documents can’t capture all the information that was discussed during a sales meeting or a presentation, nor does a single Word document hold all the various versions of a proposal or contract. On the other hand, they can very easily overwhelm by providing too much of the wrong kind of information. Am I unsure which documents are the most current version with the up-to-date content? One of the most important parts of the sales process is keeping up-to-date content in front of your prospect. With a distributed sales force and a large amount of marketing and sales content, file management can become a nightmare. The last thing you need is a team member using a 5-year-old corporate overview or the case study from a former client. You need to have confidence that your team has the most current content, that everything you deliver is consistent with your brand, and that you have control over the sales message. If you don’t, not only does it make you look disorganized, but you could have a serious liability issue when the wrong messages are being sold to your clients. Am I managing important conversations and documentation through email? Email is not a sufficient way to store important conversations about deals and negotiations. While it’s useful to easily communicate during a deal, emails can get jumbled or taken out of context and lead to miscommunication. The worst part about utilizing email to keep track of conversation history is that, more often than not, you are only corresponding with one or two of the people negotiating the deal, rather than all decision-makers involved. How can you be sure all important parties and stakeholders are aware of the conversation? Further, how can you be sure you’ve heard the opinions of everyone? Do I lack visibility in the lifecycle of our sales documents? Collaborating with an internal team to build your presentations and proposals can lead to version-control chaos, wasting countless hours of your team’s time. Once delivered to your prospect, the back-and-forth nature of proposal and contract negotiation creates opportunity for human error and unnecessary delays in the sales process. Your team needs to be able to collaborate in real-time with each other throughout the sale, and you owe it to your clients to implement a system that makes it easy for you to do business with. New tools and technologies are available today that allow you to gain more visibility into how prospects are interacting with your documents. Knowing if and when a prospect views your contract and what they spend the most time looking at can impact the direction of every conversation to follow. When it comes down to it, understanding the current state of your sales enablement strategy is key to managing a well-oiled sales engine. It also makes it easy to see why your proposals may not be converting. What sales teams need today isn’t able to be achieved with archaic processes and 20th century tools. Consider implementing a sales enablement software solution to help you track presentation, proposal and contract activity, versions and collaborative processes. This will get you on track to being able to answer “no” to the questions above, resulting in a more organized and efficient sales process. Sales and marketing engines that stand the test of time are those that keep up with the influences that technology has on our already fast-paced business environment.

4 Steps to Manage (As In Make Them Go Away) Revenue Shortfalls

Sales and Marketing Management Mon, 03/25/2013 - 06:06 Ted Binkoski After several years of slashing costs, trying to get every ounce of efficiency possible out of the organization in order to meet analyst and stockholder demands, most studies show that CEOs have come to the conclusion that it’s time to grow the top line. Organizations will usually focus on ways to improve the effectiveness of their operations first, minimizing costs wherever possible. However, cost reduction does not grow the business, and pressure will continue to mount on CEOs to increase revenue and margin. Unfortunately, many CEOs face a common problem of sales organizations not delivering on promises made due to the inability to effectively execute the strategy to grow the business at the desired or required pace. This is not to say there isn’t talent in the organization, nor the will to execute the strategy. On the contrary, most organizations have a certain level of talent with a strong belief they will be successful in delivering the sales plan targets, but too many quarters of missing the mark against sub-optimal targets leave most CEOs wanting more. Survey after survey over the past several years draw the same conclusion: Chief executives need – and want – to grow the business, but do not have confidence in their organizations to effectively execute their growth strategy. This article focuses on four of the numerous reasons why sales organizations underperform: Inability to move the performance curve Fear of pricing Management by assumption The CRM myth Inability to move the performance curve After spending millions on the latest training programs that promise a significant uplift in the performance and subsequent motivation of the sales force, one thing remains: the same 20% (top performers) are still generating two-thirds or more of the sales revenue. The financial impact projected as a result of the training does not materialize because most training sessions deliver theory, not skill development and transfer. Until sales executives take action on the bottom 10% to 20% (non-performers), and implement solid coaching with viable metrics on the rest of the organization, they will not achieve the financial potential of their organization. The mid 60% to 70% (nominal performers) is where the major improvements will occur and the greatest financial benefits will be realized. The investment in training dollars will pay off when sales management realizes its responsibility to have a much greater hands-on approach and a requirement to move a significant number of nominal performers to top performers. Fear of Pricing As the competitive environment increases, pricing of one’s goods or service becomes even more important. Most organizations are apprehensive about aggressively pricing their products, because their sales organization is too timid to defend the price of the goods or services with the value delivered. The more latitude the sales organization is given to discount price, the more price erosion will occur. Those pricing functions that have a tendency to be overly influenced by “the market” can potentially leave a significant amount of profit on the table. The price should reflect the value to the customer; once effectively articulated, most customers will pay for that value. Managing to higher pricing benchmarks set will require the sales organization to raise its game. This brings us to the next point: The inability of the sales organization to articulate the value and benefit of their product to the customer can have a devastating effect on the company’s margins. If ever there was a need to enhance a sales organization’s capability, this is it. The number one reason given by most sales representatives for not making the sale is price. All too often they will quickly look to discount the price in fear of losing the sale. Top performers will sell the product at fair or above value, but nominal and poor performers will look to discount every time. The more flexibility a sales organization has to discount a product, the more money gets left on the table. Addressing the sales representative’s ability to effectively articulate the value proposition of the goods or services delivered is critical in today’s competitive environment. Employment of the three C’s – Courage, Confidence and Conviction – is mandatory in preventing price erosion. Failure to do so will have chief executives struggling to maintain margins gained through hard-fought cost-reduction programs, as there is only so much cost that can come out of an organization. Management by Assumption On a percentage basis there are very few entrepreneurs or highly self-motivated people who require minimal supervision, even in sales who work on commissions or are heavily incented with bonuses. Unfortunately, given that 80% of an organization’s sales force are either nominal or non-performers, this doesn’t do much for helping an organization grow at the required pace. Sales executives are usually former members of the top 20% performers who are self-motivated and driven to succeed. They also naturally assume that majority of the other sales professionals are as well, and do not see the need to rigorously manage them because they, themselves, did not need to be. They believe that by simply sharing with their teams the disciplines and best practices that made them successful, they will automatically embrace them and achieve a similar level of success. Best practices and recognized success disciplines have to be properly implemented just like any other process or organizational change, but sales leadership has not been trained to do this nor do they like it and so this responsibility has historically been abdicated. The paradigms and culture in these organizations have been ingrained over decades so it will not only take an extremely strong leadership team with the resolve and grit to make it happen, but it will also take time. Unfortunately, when sales leadership does not have the time or the resolve, they turn to the next best thing – the latest and greatest (and also very expensive) CRM platform to do the management for them. The CRM Myth “If only we had this platform or that system we could knock it out of the park.” CEOs often hear this excuse from their organization for not being able to achieve the top line and margin growth so needed by the company. CRMs don’t manage people, people manage people. That does not dismiss the importance of having the right systems and tools to effectively manage your business, but all too often, sales organizations and sales leadership have false hope that a new platform or the latest technology will be the ultimate answer to improving performance and will successfully move the 80% of nominal and non-performers into a higher performing category. After all the training has failed, the compensation program changes, and restructuring occurs, the conclusion is “it must be our outdated technology.” Truth be known, most CRM platforms are underutilized. They store reams of data which are useful, but most often do not capitalize on those system capabilities that enable sales leadership to effectively manage the activities and key performance indicators that drive the behavior to achieve the results. Add to that, the poorly laid out processes upon which the platform is designed and the lack of technical competence of the sales force to effectively use the system, you ultimately end up with a very expensive underutilized CRM. To be sure, a properly designed and utilized CRM is a valuable tool, but it is not a substitute for managing the sales organization. This article was not meant to be unsympathetic to the challenges of sales leadership and their organizations. Their challenges are complex. But the gap between performing and poor-performing organizations is widening. Those executives who address the issues in the near term will be much further ahead, as it is not a matter of if chief executives will have to address these problems with their sales leadership, but rather a matter of when

My Biggest Sales Mistake March 26, 2013 by Joanne Black Marketing guru Graham McGregor shares his biggest sales blunder—not staying in touch with his referral network. I’ve made plenty of mistakes in my sales career. Have you? Graham McGregor, my colleague in New Zealand, is a master at staying in touch. A cool marketing guy and prolific writer, he regularly sends me short e-books. He even sends notes and booklets the old-fashioned way—in the mail. I read every word. His tips are energizing and enlightening. But apparently he hasn’t always been so great at nurturing his network. Let Graham tell you about his biggest sales blunder… “When I look back over my 35 years in sales and marketing, there is one big business mistake I wish I had corrected more quickly than I did—not staying in touch with and adding value to three groups of people: 1. My existing clients and customers This was foolish, because these people were perfectly positioned to make repeat purchases and give me referrals. 2. My potential clients These were people I had met with or given information to, but who had not bought. I made the mistake of thinking they were not worthwhile contacts. I forgot that people often don’t buy simply because the timing is wrong. And if I had continued to follow up and add value, many of them might have bought from me when the timing was better. 3. Key influencers These people could each potentially refer large numbers of new clients. For example, when I was selling advertising many years ago, I met with one business person who really liked me. Over a two-year period, he referred dozens of his colleagues and was directly responsible for a huge number of advertising sales. Yet I made the mistake of not reaching out and adding value to him on a regular basis. I made this mistake again and again, until one of my clients pointed it out. At the time I worked for a company that sold investment properties. One client, Steve, wrote me a letter saying he was very surprised about not hearing from me after buying. He said he was a good potential source of repeat and referral business and that I should treat him better. I was embarrassed to get Steve’s letter, because I knew the importance of nurturing my clients. I had just forgotten to do it. So I started sending every person in my database a personal note with something of value each month—often without ever mentioning my company or business. For example, I might send a couple free movie passes and a note thanking someone for being a client. Or I might send a personal note with a short article I enjoyed to someone I thought would find it interesting or useful. Within 12 months of doing this, I started getting calls, emails, and even letters from people telling me how much they appreciated me. I got referrals and repeat sales. And best of all, I strengthened my relationships with many clients and contacts—including Steve, who bought a second investment property and referred another good client. Within two years of intentionally adding value to everyone in my database, I was getting nearly 70 percent of my monthly sales from repeat sales and referrals. When you consistently add value, it’s surprising how much easy business starts to come your way.”

Initial 2013 Broadcast Spending Reflects Tough Comps With 2012, Digital Continues To Expand Share Of Agency Budgets

Online Media Daily by Joe Mandese, Yesterday, 8:11 AM U.S. ad spending expanded 4% during the first two months of 2013 vs. the same period in 2012, according to actual buying data from four of the six agency holding companies compiled by Standard Media Index (SMI). The data, which is a composite of the transactions processed by Aegis, Havas, Interpublic and Publicis, is an encouraging early indicator as it compares with 2012, which benefited from incremental demand related to political campaigns. In fact, broadcast media -- both radio (-4%) and TV (-3%) -- the main beneficiaries of political media buys, were the only media sectors to post declines during the first two months of 2013. While broadcast TV was down, increases in network (+1%) and local cable (+5%) and syndication (+1%), were enough to keep total TV ad spending erosion down to just 1% during the first two months. While all other media expanded by double-digit rates, the overhang from television -- which accounts for nearly two-thirds (64.6%) of the media budgets spent by the agencies -- was enough to keep total ad spending down to just a 4% rate of growth. “Digital” -- including online display, video, search, social, mobile, email, etc. -- accounts for the second-biggest share of media spending, representing more than a fifth (21.7%) of the buys made by the big agencies. As a category, digital media buys expanded 16% during the first two months, led by a 12% increase in premium display, a 6% gain in search and a 23% surge on ad networks. Video, social, mobile, email and exchange-based buys all had significant double-digit growth, but together represent less than 5% of the buys made by the big agency holding companies. Although still the No. 1 type of digital media bought by the SMI agencies, display’s share has eroded to a little more than a third (35.1%) from 43.5% of the digital dollars spent by the agencies during the same period in 2010.

Customer Contact Key To Loyalty

Marketing Daily by Aaron Baar, Mar 20, 2013, 1:05 PM If there’s any doubt that the balance of power has shifted to consumers (from brands), consider this: more than half of U.S. adults said they would consider switching to another brand or company for service if they were offered more channels to connect with the brand. According to a new study from InContact (which provides contact center software) and Harris Interactive, 56% of consumers said they would be at least somewhat likely to switch brands based on customer service options, and a quarter do not feel any loyalty to any type of brand. “Consumers are becoming more demanding,” Marian McDonagh, CMO of InContact, tells Marketing Daily. “[They think,] ‘There’s some deal to be had somewhere. I don’t care which brand it is, I want to get the best possible value.’” That value, according to the research, can come in the form of improved (or multiplied) customer service contact points. More than a third (68%) of consumers said that companies who have no other means of contact other than a toll-free number seem outdated, while 70% said mobile apps are an important customer service option, and would switch brands based on such availability. Meanwhile, 86% of consumers expect brands to offer multiple contact options and flexible timing for customer service. “There is absolutely, definitely a connection between how consumers view the companies they do business with based on the number of channels they can interact with,” she says. “It’s really about giving customers the preference in ways they you can do business with them.” The link means marketers have to get closer to the customer service departments within their companies to ensure the brand promise is being spread throughout all levels of the organization and back to consumers, McDonagh says. “We as marketers have to pay attention to this link between loyalty satisfaction and the communication channels for consumers,” she says. “Social and mobile are really changing the game because organizations can’t hide from their customers. Before, they were really to build a moat [separating the organization from consumers], but social media dropped the drawbridge across it.” Dr. Philip Jay LeNoble of Eexecutive Decision Systems, Inc. of Littleton, CO says, "Stay in touch with your client every other week as it shows you care about their growth and success." When I was on the stret I had wonderful renewals for 11 1/2 years because we developed unending relationships. Use social media to take advantage of easier client contact points. Study the client's comptition and help clients keep up to date on what's happening across the street. Results through top creative insures consumer engagement, helps the client with acquisition and reminds for retention as does the rlationship the client develops with the consumer."

Moms, Kids, And Mobile: We're ALL Teenagers Again

MediaPost's MEdia Daily News By David Tucker Friday, March 22, 2013 Moms and mobile: is there any topic more written about than this? Probably not, but there are good reasons for this. Mobile is important to moms but also brings about conflicted feelings, making mobile a source of tension for many moms. This tension was clear in the findings of our latest global study, “The Truth About Connected You.” The majority of moms (83%) we surveyed said they think their mobile device has improved their family life, but 32% said they are also worried that sometimes their mobile distracts them from what matters most. Should we be surprised by this tension? I would argue no and for one simple reason: According to the study, we’re all teenagers when it comes to mobile devices. A key finding revealed that, on average, global consumers have had mobile devices of some form or another for 12 years (12.7 years in the U.S. and 13.9 in the UK). While it seems as though mobiles have been around forever, and many adults think they have their mobile life figured out, the reality is we’re still wet behind the ears when deciphering the nuances of mobile communication and a life lived through a small screen. One of the challenges of our teenage years is figuring out how to manage our relationships, and this is just one of the ways we see many consumers, and particularly moms, grappling with mobile adolescence. Moms have an intense relationship with their devices. Given a selection of images to represent the relationship they have with their smartphones, moms were most likely to select images that depicted highly emotional relationships such as two friends sitting together (35%) or even two people in love (21%). And as one woman in the U.S. said of her smartphone partner: “We never part ways or leave each other’s side for too long.” As moms deepen their relationship with mobile, they need to avoid the teenage trap of letting that relationship become all-consuming. Just under half of the moms we surveyed, (43%) agreed that they laugh and smile more looking at their mobile device than they do looking at or talking to other people compared to 33% of the total survey population who agreed with this statement. The depth of this relationship is a cause for concern among some moms. Indeed, 75% of moms worry that their emotional connections are weaker than in the past, and many worry what implications this has for the future. One mom in our study reflected on the future of connections and observed, “Hopefully, people will keep a good balance so we still communicate physically and not only throughout a screen.” There are many ways for brands to help moms as they evolve from mobile adolescence to wireless womanhood, but one of the best opportunities is to find creative ways to improve not just the quantity or speed of moms’ connections but the quality as well. We already see creative examples of brands putting this principle into action. One way is to use technology to help us tune out in order to tune in better. Arianna Huffington recently launched the GPS for the Soul App, which can detect when you’re stressed and then help you reach a happier place by playing the music or poetry you love or showing you pictures of your loved ones. What mom wouldn’t find inspiration in that? From a marketing perspective, perhaps it’s time to acknowledge that we’re all still figuring out our mobile lives. Each member of the family, whether they’re 15, 35, or 55, probably behaves a bit like a teen on their mobile at some point. Mobile moms are no exception; it’s possible that they just might need a little parenting of their own.

Niche formats seen as a way to revive AM.

Inside Radio March, 22, 2013 Top News Classical in Los Angeles, bluegrass in southeastern Virginia, and a free-form format in the Washington suburbs. These specialized niche formats are helping breathe new life into a beleaguered AM dial. Apart from the small number of big, lucrative spoken word brands found in most cities, operators say it will take more unique destination formats like these to keep the AM band alive. The latest hyper-niche AM started in an engineer’s basement. That’s where Hubbard Broadcasting-Washington’s Dave Kolesar rigged up an automated internet station to stream music from his oversized music collection. Hearing it, SVP/general manager Joel Oxley was impressed enough that in December 2011 he put it on the HD3 channel of news WTOP-FM (103.5). Spanning music from the ‘40s to today, “The Gamut” lived up to its name and generated more reaction than any of the cluster’s other HD side channels. That’s why the eclectic format with 10,000 songs in active rotation now also airs on 820 AM in Frederick, VA and on all of the cluster’s HD side channels. Few stations on any band segue from the Clancy Brothers to Wilson Pickett to Robert Palmer and that’s the point. “The Gamut is so unusual that it might be amenable for AM in the sense that people will seek it out,” Kolesar says. “Destination formats tend to be a good fit for disadvantaged signals.” At the opposite end of Virginia, New River Interactive Media’s WNRV, Narrows-Pearisburg (990) plays to the rich musical heritage of the Blue Ridge Mountains as the area’s only 24/7 Bluegrass station. Across the country in L.A., Mount Wilson FM Broadcasters’ “K-Mozart” KMZT (1260) is building a small but fiercely loyal following on AM serving a market largely forgotten by commercial FM operators: classical music. “People will tune to AM if they can get content they can’t get anywhere else,” president Saul Levine says. “They just want to hear the music we’re presenting.” With a growing majority of listeners tuning exclusively to FM, broadcasters are grappling with what to do with AM frequencies. As news and sports formats migrate to FM, AM operators are challenged to develop new destination formats that will fill specialized niches, from foreign language spoken word formats to music genres ignored by FM. “The AM band is not dying but there are AM stations that are dying,” CBS Radio SVP of programming Chris Oliviero says. “It’s not the band that’s killing them, it’s the product.” More experimentation is needed to create unique formats, broadcasters say, similar to how FM signals were handed over to renegade disc jockeys and programmers in the mid-to-late ‘60s, spawning underground radio that ultimately helped transform what was then an FM wasteland. “AM is still a good distribution model that’s in pretty much every car in America,” Oxley says. “But we’ve got to be bold and try some new ideas.” It will also take investment in equipment upgrades. “AM radio can be saved,” Levine says. “The primary problem is a lack of interest on the part of operators to secure independent programming and the lack of investment in improving facilities with state of the art equipment.” Both L.A.’s KMZT and Washington’s “The Gamut” WTOP-HD3 use AM as part of a cross-platform play. KMZT’s online stream promotes the AM station for easier in-car listening. The AM markets its higher fidelity availability online and on HD. Likewise, “The Gamut” encourages listeners to experience the station in better sound quality by buying a HD Radio.

Why Radio is the Best Advertising Medium by Dina Habash on Dec 07, 2011 Fun facts about why you should choose radio as your advertising medium Two Major Points 1. Why Radio? - Everyone Drives a Car: A recent national Arbitron sponsored In-Car Study found that 96% of those who have driven or ridden in a car in the past month have used the car radio. People are in their cars an average of 15 hours per week, the average commute to work is now 51 minutes round trip. 39% say they spend more time in the car now than a year ago. Radio works 24/7, 365 days a year. Think about it, how many businesses do you visit where a radio is playing. - Radio Is Intimate. Its people talking to people. Isnt that how you persuade others in your life? And Radio can use emotion so much better than other forms of advertising. Emotion drives our purchasing decisions. - People Don’t Have To Pay To Hear Radio: Radio has always been a "free" medium giving even the smallest stations a broad audience. - Radio Is Intrusive. You see, you want your advertising to "intrude" into peoples lives to be noticed. And based on its portability, Radio is very intrusive. You can get your message to people wherever they are. When theyre in the car, the yard, the garage, the boat -- even in the shower and in bed. Radio follows people wherever they go and influences them while theyre living busy lives. - Speed, Flexibility, and Immediacy: A distinctly user-friendly medium, radio gives advertisers the speed, flexibility, and immediacy needed to compete and excel in todays highly competitive and oft-times cluttered marketplace. - B2B Factor: Dont discount the B2B factor. Radio advertising can help plant the seeds of awareness in potential clients. The vast majority of radio listeners tune in from two places: in the car and at the office. - Straight To The Store: 63% of 25-to-64-year-olds listen to Radio within an hour of making their biggest purchase of the day. (RAB Marketing Guide and Fact Book – 2003-04). - Word Of Mouth: Radio is "word of mouth on steroids." Weve all heard people who say their best advertising is "word of mouth." We dont doubt a satisfied customer is valuable to your business. But think about it. When was the last time you told ten friends about a good service or buying experience you had? But what if you could tell thousands of potential customers about that the good experience surrounding your business? Radio lets you do just that. Youre in control and managing your message. No bad word of mouth here. 2. - Cost Effective: Radio usually costs less than other media. For the JD500 youd spend on a small newspaper ad, you could have anywhere from 8 to 45 commercial messages on a radio stations. One impression vs. 45? Thats a no-brainer. When you buy cable TV or billboards, you have to pay sometimes out-of-this-world production fees, producing an ad costs way less. Those savings allow you to buy more ads, increasing your messages frequency. And thats something thats become more and more important in our advertising-saturated society. Though cable television advertising is affordable, your ad reaches a much smaller market.- Customize Your Target Audience: Radio is a great demographic targeting vehicle. Talk to a particular customer. Male or female. Young or old. High school graduate or college graduate. Radio allows you to more efficiently reach the kinds of people who are likely to buy what you sell. Some media -- like newspaper -- offer a "broad brush" approach to reach the masses. But what good does it do to spend money reaching people who arent likely to respond to your offer?- Radio responds to your needs. Its easier and quicker for us to change your advertising messages than almost any other medium. Hmmm... How many weeks will it take your billboard company to change that sign?- Reach is nice, but frequency sells- Every car comes with a radio as standard equipment. © 2013 SlideShare Inc. All rights reserved. RSS Feed ENGLISH

Radio still relevant despite rise of internet media

The Retriever Weekly: The University of Maryland Student Newspaper By Imani Spence Assistant Technology Editor Updated: Tuesday, March 12, 2013 12:03 Radio has been in the American conscience for years. It has been used to receive important information and provide entertainment since about 1920, when the first licensed radio station was established in Pittsburgh. Radio was once an event within itself; people often gathered around a speaker. The original soap operas were only broadcasted through the radio before being televised. Today, traditional radios are not commonly used outside of the car; even inside a car, people may prefer to use their mp3 players or a CD for music. Radio has evolved from an important event to an alternate option. Yet, radio is still a strong medium. Most radio show hosts still connect to their audience in a different fashion: podcasts. Podcasts are files, either video or audio, that are meant to be downloaded to a portable device. Podcasts can include anything and are very easy to create. People “subscribe” to podcasts using iTunes or an RSS feed so they will be notified every time a new podcast is published. The joy of a podcast is that it can be heard by anyone with an internet connection, whereas traditional broadcasting was limited to whoever was in that particular region and was free at that particular time. Shows that are syndicated through National Public Radio can often be found in podcast form. This American Life, a show that focuses on average stories about the average American, posts a new podcast every week based on the show that was broadcast. The show is hosted by Ira Glass, who claims to have found a new fanbase because of his podcast. Young people have more access to portable devices than traditional AM/FM radios, and National Public Radio has utilized podcasts to expand to a younger audience. While some podcasts are based on radio shows, a lot of podcasts feature original content. More people are faithful to podcasts to which they choose to subscribe. The introduction of original content has created a broader scope than radio. Podcasts can be educational while also being entertaining. Many highly ranked universities post popular lectures in iTunes as podcasts. The ability for one person to create new content without the need for a public broadcast marks a shift in radio and the way media is consumed. Most “music-based” shows utilize streaming capabilities to reach a wider audience. Streaming allows listeners to listen at their own leisure if they are away from a radio. Most streaming services are able to host a fully functional station. UMBC's radio station, WMBC is an online-only station. To listen to a show, one must log onto the website or download the stream to their music manager. Utilizing an online stream has allowed the station to reach a wider community. Listeners do not have to be in the vicinity of UMBC to listen; they can listen from anywhere. The use of online media allows music hosts to even stream music that was played through streaming services like Spotify or even 8tracks. These capture the broadcast while still allowing the listener flexibility to listen whenever is best for them. Radio is an evolving medium. In a fast-paced world, flexibility and the popularity of podcasts and streaming services proves that radio as a medium is still relevant.

Behind the gains in time-shifted viewership; It's way up on broadcast, and it's not just from DVRs

Medialife Magazine By Diego Vasquez March 22, 2013 The broadcast networks have seen seven-day DVR viewership shoot up this season. Last year 77 percent of broadcast viewing was live; this year it’s down to 71 percent. More people have DVRs now than last year at this time, 47 percent versus 43 percent, which explains some of the gains. People are also getting more comfortable with time-shifting. But another factor to keep an eye on is the rise of video on demand viewing, a function provided by most satellite and cable providers. If a VOD show contains the same commercials as the original broadcast, it can count toward the Nielsen rating. Most notably for advertisers, the fast-forward function can be disabled on these broadcasts so that viewers are forced to sit through the commercials. Networks may start pushing harder on VOD because it is measurable, unlike tablet and mobile viewing. Stacey Schulman, chief research officer at TVB, talks to Media Life about the advantages and disadvantages of VOD for advertisers, why broadcast ratings are down, and whether C7 ad buys are in the offing. How much of this season’s broadcast ratings declines are attributable to time shifting? It’s a good question, and it’s not an easy answer, frankly. We know what the numbers look like in the context of, say, last year. When you compare the time-shifted portion of the audience, live versus live+7, we’ve gained about 2 percent more time shifting, and with cable it’s about 1 percent. But it’s not an apples to apples comparison. With broadcast it’s a handful of networks, and with cable it’s everything else. If you look at the just the top 10 ad-supported cable networks, the live-plus-same-day audience is down about the same amount, about 8 percent compared to 8 or 8.5 percent for broadcast. The other piece of the equation is VOD. Video on demand has been accounted for in time-shifted viewing as long as the commercial load was identical. So as long as the broadcasters ran the exact same commercial load it would be included. But historically they have not done that. The assumption was people wouldn’t stand for it. It wasn’t until about two years ago when I was at Turner looking at C3 numbers, they looked better than they should have. What we found was people were actually starting to find the stuff on VOD, and when they can’t fast forward commercials it made C3 better. The way we found it is we found all this viewing happening that was attributed to time shifting viewing in non-DVR homes, so by definition that was by VOD. VOD is becoming a very important part of how people are shifting viewing habits. In many cases they prefer it because they don’t have to remember to set the DVR. And that counts in the time-shifted viewing bucket. So that’s part of why time shifted viewing is growing. What we know from early data Nielsen is collecting is between 3 and 5 percent of time shifting is coming from VOD in the first three days, and about 10 to 15 percent in the first seven days. So that means more is coming from that four to seven days, which is not what we see in the regular time-shifting trends. If VOD becomes a bigger piece of time shifting, which we believe it will, then we may see more of a balance of the time-shifted audience happening in days one through three versus four through seven, which will bolster the network argument that we should go to C7. Is time shifting impacting broadcast and cable equally? No, it’s not, because they’re not equal animals. A lot of the programming that does well on cable is sports, and most sports is watched live. Other big cable programming is news, and that’s also watched primarily live. Where there is more scripted programming that you get on the big networks, then you get more comparable numbers. So overall it’s happening about half as much as it is on broadcast, but when you look at the top 10 networks, it’s about the same. Obviously the DVR has been around for a while. Why are we seeing such marked time-shifting gains this season? Part of it is VOD. But the other thing that is going to change the game is that come next primetime season, we’ll have a new universe estimate. Part of the reason we’ve seen the decline in broadcast is because it’s not just movement to time shifting or VOD, but there is more viewing happening on tablets and on broadband and other devices that just aren’t being measured. So I don’t believe the decline we see is real in terms of what audiences are actually doing. So that’s another factor to why it looks as though TV broadcast and the top 10 cable networks are declining–it could be going into other device viewing. The universe estimate will eventually increase to include homes that have other devices that play video content. But if a home is only watching TV on their tablet or their computer but don’t have a traditional TV or monitor used as just a TV, that won’t be counted. But at least we’re moving toward a definition that can accommodate those extra viewers. What is broadcast doing to adjust and account for increased DVR usage? The best thing that they’re doing is putting more of their content in VOD and disabling fast forwarding. The next best is getting it out on other devices. The reason I prioritize that is VOD will be measured and the other stuff isn’t as of right now. That’s the best thing they can do. I know they’re trying different stunts. Speaking of that, Fox ran a campaign for “The Following” that encouraged people to set their DVRs to record the show. Do you think we’ll see more of that “DVR first” mindset in promotions by the networks? It’s curious to me. If I were a network I would be pushing people to VOD more than I would push them to DVRs, because we know there we can control the fast forwarding. From a programming perspective, if the programming side is talking to the sales side, and many times they’re not–it’s the sales people that have to end up dealing with what’s lost in the screen-shifted mode, as we like to say these days. The network heads are making a push to move from C3 to C7 ratings as currency for ad buys. When, if ever, do you think that will become a reality? I think it can become a reality now. It’s going to depend on the right advertisers and marketers and network partners to come to that agreement. It will make sense for some, but not for others. But if you’re trying to capture the biggest audience you can, I think it makes sense. It wouldn’t surprise me if there were some C7 deals done a the upfront this year. Maybe it would happen quietly, but it wouldn’t surprise me if some marketers move in that direction. It’s hard to tell though. But it’s really not a big leap for a marketer to go there.

Online Ad Share Expected To Reach $51 Billion By 2017

OnlineMediaDaily by Laurie Sullivan, Yesterday, 7:30 AM Local media advertising revenue will reach $132.7 billion this year -- creeping up to $136.6 billion in 2014, $139.5 billion in 2015, $145.2 billion in 2016, and $148.8 billion in 2017, according to BIA/Kelsey estimates. In its U.S. Local Media Forecast (2012-2017) released Monday, BIA/Kelsey reports online digital advertising will take $25.7 billion of the $132.7 billion that companies will spend on digital media this year. About $107 billion will go into traditional media in 2013, but investments will continue to rise. By 2017, the firm estimates online media will take more than $41 billion of the nearly $149 billion that companies will spend, which means higher investments overall in advertising and marketing. The importance of national advertising varies by local media. Mobile takes 85%; cable, 60%; TV, 42%; online, 40.0%; radio, 22%; newspapers, 18.0%; and Yellow Pages, 14%. Mobile continues to grow at a faster pace. In 2013, the industry will see $1.8 billion in investments this year, rising to $3.1 billion in 2014, $4.3 billion in 2015, $5.3 billion in 2016, and $6.4 in 2017 National brands accounted for 32.1% or $42.5 billion of the $132.5 billion spent on local media advertising last year. National’s share of local ad spending is expected to grow to nearly $51 billion by 2017.

ABC Works on an App for Live Streaming Shows to Mobile Devices By BRIAN STELTER Published: March 18, 2013 THE WALT DISNEY Company, while sorting out the future of the online video Web site Hulu, has an app in the works that may render Hulu passé for some people. The app will live stream ABC programming to the phones and tablets of cable and satellite subscribers, allowing those subscribers to watch “Good Morning America” on a tablet while standing in line at Starbucks, for instance, or watch “Nashville” on a smartphone while riding a bus home from work. The app could become available to some subscribers this year, according to people briefed on the project, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about it publicly. With the app, ABC, a subsidiary of Disney, will become the first of the American broadcasters to provide a live Internet stream of national and local programming to people who pay for cable or satellite. The subscriber-only arrangement, sometimes called TV Everywhere in industry circles, preserves the cable business model that is crucial to the bottom lines of broadcasters, while giving subscribers more of what they seem to want — mobile access to TV shows. The arrangement could extend the reach of ads that appear on ABC as well. Disney already distributes similar live streaming and on-demand apps, known as “Watch” apps, for ESPN and the Disney Channel. Special hurdles exist, however, for the ABC app, in part because of contracts between the network and the companies that produce some of its shows that were written before mobile phone video streaming was even possible. Other complexities involve ABC’s local stations, which might — if not courted properly — feel threatened by an app. But ABC, seeing shifts in consumer behavior, is pressing forward. It has started to talk with stations about how to include them in the live streaming app. Illustrating the difficult contractual issues, ABC offhandedly first mentioned a forthcoming Watch ABC app in a news release nine months ago, when it signed a deal with Comcast to make several Watch Disney apps available to Comcast subscribers. But the network live streaming ability is inching closer to fruition, the people briefed on the project said. A spokesman for ABC declined to comment. Executives at other networks who have heard about the ABC plan regard it with a mixture of awe and fear. No other broadcaster is believed to be as far along as ABC, which is also the first broadcaster to sell TV episodes through Apple’s iTunes store and the first to stream free episodes on its Web site. Subscriber-only apps like Watch Disney and, eventually, Watch ABC stand in stark contrast to the free-to-all content available on Hulu, the online video site that is co-owned by Disney, Comcast and News Corporation. Comcast is a silent partner. The other two companies are debating what to do with the six-year-old Web site, which has lost most of its original executive backers at NBC and Fox and will soon lose its founding chief executive, Jason Kilar. Last week, when Mr. Kilar, who is stepping down this month, named an acting chief executive, Andy Forssell, he wrote in a message to staff members that “Disney and News Corporation are currently finalizing their forward-looking plans with Hulu, and the senior team has been working closely with them in that process. Once the plans are finalized, a permanent decision will be made regarding the C.E.O. position.” Hulu has been an innovator in both the Web streaming and the advertising arenas, forcing media companies to think about how their TV shows should be distributed online. But it has been marginalized as the companies seek out more lucrative revenue streams. Under one plan discussed recently, according to several people with ties to Hulu, Disney would buy out the other co-owners’ stakes in the company. But the opposite could happen, too, with News Corporation as the buyer. Or the two companies may choose to sell Hulu to a third party, if one shows interest. The companies could also retain their stakes in Hulu and change the business model. Disney is said to be more supportive of the free, ad-supported model that it is most closely associated with; News Corporation is more supportive of Hulu Plus, the monthly subscription service that is an add-on to the free Hulu site. Mr. Kilar, in his message last week, did not indicate when any change could take place. Whatever happens, the owners appear more interested in maintaining their existing relationships with cable and satellite companies. That is what an app like Watch ABC would do. It would protect the cable model while providing a good example of how authentication — the idea that people log in to prove they have a subscription — works. A few cable and satellite companies already have their own products that allow ABC and other broadcasters to be streamed on devices. But for most Americans, it remains difficult to place-shift a show — say, to watch a local nightly newscast live on an iPhone. A start-up company that is being sued by Disney and several other major media companies, Aereo, has made that possible by installing an antenna farm in New York; some analysts have said Aereo might motivate broadcasters to make their own live streams more freely available on their own terms. But James L. McQuivey, a digital media analyst at Forrester and the author of the book “Digital Disruption,” said he thought ABC’s plan wasn’t a rebuttal to the start-up. “This and Aereo are both a response to the fact that people are habitually connected to live viewing,” he said. “The Internet will gradually undo that,” he predicted, “but it’s being very gradual about that for the time being.” Brooks Barnes contributed reporting.

Local TV News, Losing Viewers, Seeks Bigger Mobile Identity

MediaPost's TV Watch A media critique by Wayne Friedman Tuesday, March 19, 2013 On CNN's new show "The Lead,” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "Obesity is going to kill more people than starvation this year." Too much of a good thing? Television can be like that. But perhaps it is worse with local news. That's because stations have added more local news programming than ever while at the same time losing viewership, according to the Pew Research Center. Too bad. Things were kind of looking up when Pew reported a slight uptick in viewership of network affiliates' newscasts in 2011. A year later all viewership gains were lost -- and then some. How could stations so miscalculate this viewership? You have to believe the stations were convinced that their long-term existence, identity and future ad revenue growth relied on local news, not afternoon talk from Ellen DeGeneres, reruns of "Big Bang Theory" or tough legal outcomes from "Judge Judy." Last year, viewership of key late local newscasts slipped 7% to around 25 million; early evening newscasst dropped by around the same amount to 22 million viewers. We don't have specific revenues for the average TV news-producing station in 2012. But in 2011, they dropped to $19 million versus $21 million in 2010. This was down from $34 million in 2000. (Total local TV adv sales rose to $19.7 billion in 2012. from $17.9 billion in 2011. Stations hope that in future years digital – and especially mobile -- revenue becomes a way bigger deal for their expensive and singular TV. Right now about 3% of station revenues come from all their digital platforms. Will there be a market there? Local TV marketing executives believe their long-time big-brand call letters and affiliate names give them a big advantage over would-be competitors. While mobile is still the promised land, the advertising model for station’s digital online business -- their websites -- is still lackluster, even considering the higher-than-TV CPMs for premium video. Stations are now looking at live streaming through TV Everywhere deals, possibly abandoning their more ambitious mobile DTV initiatives. Time may be on their side as the mobile business -- for both traditional media players and others -- is still in slow development concerning such factors as standard viewing metrics. Trouble is, consumers are waiting around for local mobile TV to happen.

Why Innovation By Brainstorming Doesn't Work

FAST COMPANY By Debra Kaye February 28, 2013 Anything--even doing laundry--will help you dream up new ideas better than sitting in a meeting, says Debra Kaye, author of "Red Thread Thinking." A case study of the history of the single-use detergent pod. Eleven men and women file into a conference room and take their places around a large table. Coffee cups and pastries are assembled in front of them. George, the leader, steps up to a large whiteboard and scrawls across the top “SOAP STORM SESSION 9/18/12.” “Okay, let’s begin,” he tells the group. “Let’s just start free-associating. What do we think of when we think clean laundry?” he asks. “To get the ball rolling, I’ll write a few words down,” he says and dashes off chore, piles, whites and brights, and fresh on the board. “What else?” he asks. Several people add a few more words: time-consuming, fold, bright, uncontaminated, pretty, nice, old-fashioned, and pleasant. The meeting continues for about an hour, with more words and thoughts added. The plan was for the team to come up with a new idea for laundry detergent. When the meeting is over, the team members file back to their cubicles, word lists in hand, to ponder the outcome--but none of them ever produced any new insights into doing laundry that would lead to a new product. That’s because the group made the fatal error of trying to innovate by brainstorming around the idea of the central attribute of laundry--cleanliness. So while they came up with a pretty long list of words, none of the few concepts that came out of the meeting--“cleans in a shorter time,” “cleans without presoaking,” “brightens without fading”--was out-of-the-box spectacular. This scenario takes place every day in office suites around the world. That’s an important point to remember, because companies everywhere are brainstorming the same things about clean laundry as my imaginary team. Everything about clean laundry likely has been thought of before. It turns out that a brainstorming session is a great place to load up on baked goods and caffeine, but it’s not so great for generating ideas. In fact, the team in my imaginary example would have come up with more original associations and innovative thoughts had they stayed home and sorted a sock drawer, taken a hike, relaxed in a bathtub, or done just about anything else autonomously--including a load of laundry. The conventional wisdom that innovation can be institutionalized or done in a formal group is simply wrong. Part of what we know about the brain makes it clear why the best new ideas don’t emerge from formal brainstorming. First, the brain doesn’t make connections in a rigid atmosphere. There is too much pressure and too much influence from others in the group. The “free association” done in brainstorming sessions is often shackled by peer pressure and as a result generates obvious responses. In fact, psychologists have documented the predictability of free association. You can see this clearly from the responses to “clean laundry” in my example. One association feeds off the next in an expected fashion. The leader does what leaders often do--inadvertently gets the upper hand by throwing out certain words that generate conventional results, thereby dominating and directing the “free” association of the group. As I said earlier, the team should have been given the day off to do laundry. That’s pretty much what happened at Philadelphia-based Cot’n Wash Inc. Originally the company was a cotton mill that spun cotton and made sweaters. In the 1980s, the owner’s wife developed a gentle detergent that would wash the sweaters without yellowing or stretching. Flash forward about 30 years. Nina E. Swift, wife of the original owner’s son, Jonathan Propper, was doing laundry one day and realized that even though she loved Cot’n Wash, she disliked measuring and pouring liquid or powder from a jug or a box. Both were messy, and she used far more detergent than was recommended (measuring is imperfect and people err on the side of generous, she discovered). This was a mega consumer insight. Was it just she who felt this way, or was it everyone? She talked to Jonathan, who thought she was on to something. So he brought the idea to his small company and created Dropps, a single-use package of detergent. One small package, similar to those used in dishwashing packets, washes a load of laundry--all you have to do is toss it in the wash and go. It solved a lot of problems--no more measuring, mess, or waste. The product also benefited the environment by using less water, plastic, and packaging. No phosphates or chlorine means it’s green. “The technology actually existed for the dissolvable laundry detergent package,” says Dropps’s Remy Wildrick, who calls herself the pragmatic side of Propper’s creative mind. “And the patent happened to be owned by a person in Philadelphia, which was just a nice side note. We bought the technology from him and developed Dropps.” The product is sold online, at independent retailers, and at Target. Other larger manufacturers didn’t introduce their versions of the single-serving detergent pod until years later. “What’s funny is that the technology was sitting there for quite a while, but none of the big guys were using it. They were sticking to the same old jugs and boxes--but in mid-2012 they all started coming out with uni-packages,” says Remy. Since Dropps is small, it can’t compete on volume sales with the big guys, but it can compete on the product’s green aspects and focus on the fact that it contains Cot’n Wash detergent, which has an almost cult-like fan base, especially among the environmentally conscious. Fresh ideas come when your brain is relaxed and engaged in something other than the particular problem you’re embroiled in. In the Dropps situation, Jonathan Propper’s wife identified a problem, and he made a connection to a solution, a technology that existed for another application. This is the polar opposite of what happens in brainstorming sessions. Long showers, soaks in a tub, long walks, or doing chores are frequently when those “synapses” that find alternative solutions to a problem in new ways all hit together so that the big idea can spring.

In Advertising, Stick To The Tried And True

Engage: Affluent Thursday, Feb 28, 2013 by Layton Han, Yesterday, 1:37 PM If you look at the industry headlines these days, the majority of the stories are still focused on social and mobile – particularly for luxury brands. Experts agree that marketers should be banking on these new channels, which open up a world of opportunity with respect to data, targeting and round-the-clock access. I recommend an investment here, but I also recommend not putting all your eggs into the social/mobile basket just yet. While both are promising and will increasingly demand more budget, targeted display is still your “tried and true” and should still take the lion’s share of your advertising dollars for the time being: Here’s why: Targeting keeps getting better: With so much data readily available today we can hit the mark with incredible accuracy. Between improvements in contextual and behavioral targeting, and the introduction of data science to marketing, display has become a truly amazing medium for reaching customers. These days, a media buyer can zoom in on a particular audience – say, business travelers who frequently fly between JFK and LAX, book deluxe queen hotel rooms, have a HHI of $125K or more, and have a post-graduate degree – and be fairly confident that they’ll reach that crowd. What’s more, with display, you can really target passions. If your audience loves travel, running a beautifully designed ad for your high-end waterproof watch on the “island getaways” section of an exclusive travel site is an experience that cannot yet be matched on in social. Targeting on social sites is also incredibly powerful, but you don’t have the same opportunity to present gorgeous, interactive ads against high-quality editorial content. Economy and Scale: There are a handful of social networks, and while they certainly reach a tremendous audience, they can’t reach everyone all the time. Consumers still consume content on news sites, niche sites and other destinations outside the soc nets. Display is infinitely scalable and reaches a broad range of demographics. And because display on more traditional publisher sites is generally represented by IAB standard units, unlike the native ads on many social sites, it can easily be purchased through programmatic buys and measured via standard analytics. That means a single ad buy can reach your target audience, at scale, across an entire network of relevant sites. What’s more, these ads are typically purchased by CPM or PPC, which makes budgeting easier, as well. Ads in Facebook’s new exchange (FBX) can be purchased programmatically, but to date, it’s the only social network offering this convenience. Twitter, LinkedIn and others require separate I/Os. Measurability: The greatest advantage display has over the newer channels is measurement. Whether the goal is to drive users to our site or into our store, we can track and measure that, and we can map it back to our actual business goals. A direct response ad results in a conversion, whether that’s a lead or a sale. A branding campaign will have clear KPIs that correspond to analytics and a clear place within the conversion funnel. With social, things tend to be a little more nebulous. What does a “like” or a “follow” mean to our bottom line? If someone shares our Instagram on their Facebook page, how will that impact sales? We can infer things, but unless we’re running display alone on social sites, we can’t deliver the hard metrics we get measuring search and display, so it’s challenging to determine ROI or ROAS. At the end of the day, we’re still working out what works in social and mobile. My advice is to keep the lion’s share of your marketing investment in the tried and true, including display, search, email, etc – and allocate a percentage of your budget for new channels. That percentage may exceed display’s share over time, but not before we hash out the best practices in these nascent channels.

Personalizing Advertising With Real-Time Creative

Media Post's RTBInsider by Ben Kartzman, Friday, March 1, 2013 Marketers have long sought the ability to deliver messages specifically tailored to individual consumers. The idea of sending the right message at the right time to the right consumer is a marketer's silver bullet—a way to achieve more efficient ad buys and loftier conversion ratios. Over the years, the industry has taken a few baby steps toward this elusive goal. Now, thanks to real-time creative technology (RTC), we’re closer than ever to achieving what had once been thought impossible. RTC is creative that is able to automatically and instantaneously customize itself to a specific consumer, using information like the consumer’s gender, browsing behavior or location, to name but a few examples. Traditionally, advertisers placed the same display ad in front of all consumers and hoped for the best. This “spray-and-pray” tactic is massively inefficient. Moreover, because designing ads and buying media takes time, advertisers needed to design creative long before the ads would actually go live, meaning that ads were always lagging behind the most current events and trends. RTC helps solve these inefficiencies. Rather than serving the same ad to many consumers, RTC allows advertisers to customize the creative to match the individual. In a sense, it allows for bespoke advertising. Plus, recognizing that advertising developed for a particular audience segment three months ago may be irrelevant today, RTC allows advertisers to load creative elements in advance and then choose what to display on the fly, resulting in more current and responsive campaigns. Consider two car shoppers: a man schlepping through a frigid Pennsylvania winter and a woman sunning on her porch in balmy South Florida. Does it really make sense to send the same automobile ad to each of them? With real-time creative, the woman would receive an ad showing a red convertible suitable for driving to the beach, and the man would see an ad for a black SUV capable of navigating snowy roads. The tailor-made content would appear instantly, offering a targeted message that would increase the likelihood that the consumers will make a purchase. RTC is part of the natural progression of online advertising. The last few years have witnessed the rapid proliferation of real-time bidding (RTB) using online exchanges in which suppliers sell ad space, in real time, to the highest bidder. With RTB exchanges, advertisers have been able to use a viewer’s website browsing habits to deliver a targeted ad in a matter of milliseconds. The power of RTB’s audience targeting capabilities is readily apparent, and RTB continues to attract marketer interest and elicit higher prices. Forrester Research projects that by 2017, rates for digital advertising traded via online exchanges will reach $6.64 per 1,000 impressions, more than double the current rate of $3.17, and total display advertising spend through exchanges will rise to about $8.3 billion, from less than $2 billion today. RTB brings the power of data to media placement; RTC does the same for creative, producing better messaging and enabling marketers to reach their intended audiences in more effective ways. RTC draws upon the same Big Data technology as RTB — cookie matching, tracking tags, IP addresses and more — to deliver images and words appropriate for a particular viewer. It is relevant content tailored instantaneously and delivered seamlessly — a marketer’s dream. RTC platforms will facilitate more efficient advertising spending, improve ROI for advertisers and media buyers, and contribute to better end-user experiences. Moreover, recent technical advances have made things easier to use for advertisers and agencies and addressed many of the privacy concerns associated with the first generation of behaviorally targeted ads that “followed” users to different sites online. Aligning data, media and creative in an RTC platform will replace the one-size-fits-all models of the past with relevant messaging in real time. Its rewards will be evident across advertising’s entire ecosystem, enabling marketers to reach targeted users with more precision and less expense. Conceptually, RTC is premised on the principle that everything changes, from seasons and climate to consumer interests and needs. RTC takes a snapshot of those variables in real time and incorporates them into a timely and relevant consumer message. Digital marketers are taking giant leaps forward as advanced technology enables better capture, analysis and leveraging of consumer data. Using this information, RTC will put a new face on interactive advertising, one that at any given moment will look a lot like the end user’s.

Loyalty Drives Consumers More Than Discounts, Deals, Content

Media Post's Online Media Daily by Gavin O'Malley, Yesterday, 9:01 PM Deals, discounts, and exclusive content are all nice -- but not nearly as important to social-media consumers as the inherent loyalty they feel for certain brands. In the fourth quarter of 2012, 60.7% of mobile users said they followed brands on Twitter in a show of natural support, compared to 51.9% who did so simply to receive sales or deals, according to mobile video ad technology company Rhythm NewMedia. Conversely, 51.1% of mobile users said they followed brands on Twitter just to receive exclusive content and updates. Similarly, while 57.6% of mobile consumers reported “liking” brands on Facebook in a sign of allegiance, 55.9% did so simply for the sake of sales or deals, and just 39.8% reported doing so for exclusive content. But can’t brands build loyalty by offering deals, original content, and other incentives? Yes and no, according to Ujjal Kohli, CEO of Rhythm NewMedia. “You can definitely strengthen brand loyalty through mobile video advertising that provides an optimal launching point to drive social engagements with your brand,” he said. Regardless of how brands court them, mobile engagement is soaring. In the fourth quarter of last year, a full 74% o of users accessed Facebook -- and 63% accessed Twitter -- several times per day via smartphones and tablets, Rhythm reports. 68% of mobile social users "like" brands -- be it a show, product, store, or service -- on Facebook, while 56% follow brands on Twitter. As a result, 24% of marketers are now activating social media through mobile campaigns, which represents a 430% increase year-over-year, according to Rhythm. In 2012, Rhythm said it oversaw mobile video ad campaigns for some 200 brands, including Disney, Samsung, McDonald’s, and General Motors. As Philip Jay LeNoble, Ph.D. of Littleton, CO notes, "For local-direct clients....helping build the brand name of the client with creative is more valuable to them than the 'deal-of-the-month.' Consumers remembers how they were treated during their shopping experience rather than a special in order for a business to gain and enjoy the financial rewards from customer retention."

TV Advertisers Need To Open Their Eyes...And Ears!

Media Post's Online Media Daily by Bob McCurdy, 10 hours ago It's no accident that virtually every successful television commercial has a powerful audio track, as advertisers and their creative agencies put a lot of thought into how their television commercials sound. We all recognize that these commercials are supported with large ad budgets -- but what often goes unrecognized is that a tremendous amount of "audio" equity is a byproduct of this extensive television investment. All too often this equity is being under-leveraged and left to wallow on “marketing” benches. Last year, a study by the Time Warner Research Council concluded that audio cues served to refocus attention on both television shows and commercials when viewers were multitasking. Another recent study by EyeTrackShop found that 28 percent of a TV ad's impact is lost in terms of brand recall and general perception when commercials are muted. But the results of our study show the impact of audio in television commercials to be much higher. Television advertisers should take note. We studied television commercials from 14 major U.S. advertisers including CoverGirl, Old Spice, Diet Pepsi, Allstate, Duracell, Snickers, Warner Brothers, Dos Equis, Apple, DirectTV, Taco Bell, Capital One, Outback and GEICO. All audio and visual "brand" references were extracted, and respondents were served either the de-branded TV clip or an audio version of the same commercial. The participants were asked three questions: to identify the brand, pinpoint their “aha” moment of recognition, and describe their emotional response to the audio and video segments. In the absence of any visual cues, the audio clips generated brand identification metrics that rivaled -- and in some cases equaled -- the TV clip, as other senses compensated for the lack of any visual stimulation. Overall, the audio clips generated 93% of the brand identification scores that the television commercial clips generated, with the scores ranging from 82% for CoverGirl to 100% for Diet Pepsi and Duracell. Clearly, audio cues effectively filled any communication void that might have been presumed due to the lack of any visual stimuli. Regarding “aha” moments, what we discovered surprised even us. Respondents to the television clip often cited various audio triggers -- in some cases, 2-3 times as often as the visual cues. For example, 25% of respondents exposed to the Taco Bell television clip referenced visual cues as the brand trigger, while 55% mentioned the sound of the iconic Taco Bell "bong" as the "aha" branding moment. For the Apple Siri television clip, Siri's voice was cited as the top trigger in brand identification. In Duracell's television clip, 50% more viewers referenced its distinctive three-note "audio signature" as the brand trigger than any visual stimuli. For Outback Steakhouse, television clip respondents cited the announcer’s distinguished voice as the brand trigger four times more often than any visual element of the commercial. In terms of emotional response, for example, as many respondents to the audio clip of the Warner Brothers’ movie "The Hobbit" expressed "excitement" to see the movie as those exposed to the television clip. In Taco Bell’s case, the audio clip generated mentions of "hunger" after exposure as often as those exposed to the television clip. For CoverGirl, the audio clip was just as likely to invoke feelings of "happiness" as the TV clip. Many successful TV campaigns generate sufficient exposure so that the narrator's voice, the music in the commercial, the tagline or the verbiage is all that is needed to trigger extensive brand messaging. Marketers are in a position to easily leverage this messaging established in television and on radio, and not miss a beat. The data from this study supports the idea that there is indeed a point in many successful television campaigns when audio can deliver the marketing wallop of a television commercial -- and a lot more efficiently. In this business environment, can any business afford to leave any marketing asset under-utilized?