OK, I am almost a week late, but nevertheless. Bob Garfield of Advertising Age criticises the main Superbowl ads – the good, the bad and the ugly. And of course also the consumer generated spots, which I hadn’t seen so far.
Interestingly enough, many super-advertisers skip this years super-bowl. P&G, Unilever, Microsoft all won’t show a single ad during the game.
There are some noteworthy quotes in that article:
A quote of John B. Williams, general manager-Windows global communications
We think we have a product and a message that stands alone. Borrowed interest is always something you look at, but [our marketing] will give us more pop, in our opinion, than going into a Super Bowl environment.
A P&G spokesperson stated via email:
Simply put, we’re looking to optimize the intro of the new campaign, and the Super Bowl was not part of the strategy
Seems like the main advertising sports event had reached its peak last year and is now on the decline. At least as long as they don’t change something about the setup – i.e. prices, integration with other media/events/channels, whatever. Does that mean advertisers will shift more to online? Not necessarily so. Dove experienced good results with outdoor last year and expects more resonation of the academy awards.
In the end it shows that currently everything is under close scrutiny, even events like the superbowl…
On the Church of the Customer Blog is an interesting Post about CBS Subscription figures on YouTube.
in the first three months of having CBS content on YouTube more than 40,000 people subscribed to the CBS channel. Plus, it had tallied 75 million total views of the 700+ CBS-uploaded videos.
They calculate out the possible (!) longer term figures resulting in more than 300 million pageviews and 160.000 subscribers. But the number of 160.000 is much more important and valueable than the number of pageviews.
Subscriber growth is really the new keystone measure of success because it’s the best indicator of your ability to create loyalty.
This is absolutely true. For some reason, we have forgotten about the bursting bubble a few years back and we have again started talking about millions of video and page views and downloads (and pageviews are no longer a strong currency).
But the true value of the new web2.0 platforms doesn’t reside in the reach of eyeballs itself, but in the stickiness factor of glueing these eyeballs to the site, day after day. Loyalty, in a word. And the possibility to extract complex profiles through user data and behaviour for targetting, as well as maximising the frequency of interaction by the user through this knowledge. Ever more important, since most web2.0 business models are relying on advertising for funding. (And it can’t all just be Google Adsense, I suppose.)
So, in order to avoid the web 1.0 bubble, you should ask the following questions when considering web2.0 business models.
Eyeballs are valuable, no doubt. But eyeballs that we know certain things about are even more valuable, especially if we can differentiate between the eyeballs of the top 20% and the other 80% – thinking about the Pareto principle. In future, those web 2.0 platforms will succeed, that can link the pure webstats to concrete user profiles that offer the possible insights of “qualified leads†to companies advertising on that site.
All of this is already possible, I think, but at the same time I get the feeling, that most web2.0 sites are still mostly interested in maximising eyeballs and (general) profiles – neglecting the deeper profiling opportunities that advertisers will soon ask for.
Clickz mentions a survey in which 500 direct marketers were asked about they spending plans in 2007. The result? A visible shift towards online.
As many as 85 percent of direct marketers and service providers say they will move dollars to e-mail and Internet channels
Now this is great, but:
Meanwhile, a comparatively meager 51 percent say they will increase their offline budgets.
Hey, that’s still half of the sample asked in this survey! The reason: there will be a general increase of budgets in DM:
“The survey indicated there’s going to be a lot of growth across the board, but especially online and e-mail marketing,†Alterian Director of Marketing Joe Stanhope told ClickZ News.
E-Mail will be the winner, so watch out for even more clutter in your inbox:
Eighty-one percent plan to increase spending on the channel, while 50 percent intend to up their direct mail budget and 45 percent say they will spend more on personalized landing pages.
The last quote once again proves that one of the main benefits of the online channel – the measurability – is yet to be discovered by many. But if they do, they know.
Companies most comfortable with online and e-mail marketing are in large part the ones that have invested in analytics. “There is a correlation between channel integration and analytics,†said Stanhope. “If a marketer has gotten to this sophistication level where they’re doing integrated marketing campaigns, those are the people sophisticated enough to have that kind of infrastructure to carry out analysis.â€
Advertising Age calls out the Ad Age Agency of the Year: The Consumer
After Time Magazine had already named their person of the year to be “You†it was about time to recognise the “agency†who did much of the advertising work during the last year. All the Consumer Generated Advertising that took place during the last year – most of it in the US, of course, but even in Germany we had some. Hey, even I had one project like that and in our agency we had – I think – 3 in total this year. Well deseverd, consumers. And keep up the good work!
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