von Roland Hachmann | Jun 8, 2007 | Ad News, Blog, Digital Marketing, Online Advertising
Joost is apparently testing new ad formats:
In addition to in-stream 15- and 30-second spots, the company is serving ads in „bug“ format. Bugs are brands that appear as floaters in the corner of the viewing screen. These typically appear shortly after an ad for the floating brand has just aired.
Clicking on the bug opens a new browser window that takes viewers to the product.
Interactive television with the corresponding interactive advertising is already in use by some stations (for example Sky in the UK). You press a button whenever a red dot appears in a corner and then you get further information. But in the case Joost, you can send them deep into the web, onto landing pages, rich media experiences, contact forms, etc. This will clearly change the way TV advertising is perceived and produced!
And there is even an additional benefit:
Ads will largely be targeted to viewers based on personal and demographic data that users entered when they first registered with Joost.
Somehow I don’t think they’ll stick with only personal and demographic data. How about behavioural targetting? Measure and track what they watch and what they have clicked on in the past (and hope that it is still the same person sitting in front of the screen).
von Roland Hachmann | Jun 7, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture, Digital News, Marketing Trends, Social Media Marketing
There is an interesting article at the Times Online about the new book „the cult of the amateur“ by Andrew Keen. A cry out against the crowdism of web 2.0 and how it is killing our culture. How user generated content on wikipedia, blogs, youtube, et al results in the crippling of traditional, quality content producing industries.
I don’t agree. I think quality will still prevail. The problem with some of these „quality content producers“ was simply the fact that it wasn’t really good quality. The value for money isn’t right. So it is better to watch much worse content from users for free rather than paying anything for only mediocre content.
I think this whole trend will only result in a market shake out. Providers of really good content will always be able to charge money. They will always enjoy large appreciation. But those providing contents with little added value (e.g. newspapers simply copying news from a press service or TV stations showing low quality TV series) will face a decrease in acceptance.
They also state the example of how the interent has resulted in big problems for the music industry. This I don’t agree with at all. The biggest problem of the music industry is the fact that they have not adapted quick enough. There is lots of potential to leverage the net. Apple with iTunes has proven that there is lots of opportunities!
The internet is making standard market mechanisms more efficient, that’s all.
von Roland Hachmann | Mai 9, 2007 | Blog, Digital Culture
Having first looked at joost a few days ago, I wasn’t very impressed with the contents I could find. But certainly, they are (were?) still in beta. Now you can read everywhere that they are signing new deals with content providers / producers / TV stations.
In Tuesday’s deal with Time Warner Inc.’s Turner Broadcasting System, Joost said it would air episodes of the popular “Aqua Teen Hunger Force†and “Robot Chicken†from Turner’s Adult Swim network, along with “Larry King Live†and other CNN news and interview programs.
Still doesn’t sound too great to me, but then there are apparently other deals, such as:
- Sony Corp. will run episodes of several old TV series including “Charlie’s Angels†and “Starsky & Hutch†on Joost.
- Time Warner’s Sports Illustrated will run photo shoots and programs about its swimsuit issue.
- The National Hockey League will broadcast vintage games and game highlights.
- Hasbro Inc. will run old episodes of “Transformers†and “G.I. Joe.â€
If they continue like this, then they will soon enough have a lot of good quality content. Considering that you can choose what you watch, and the fact that the quality of the streamed (peer-to-peer) videos is very good, this is a real competition to any regular cable TV…
von Roland Hachmann | Mai 8, 2007 | Ad News, Blog, Digital Culture, Digital News, Marketing, Marketing Trends, Mobile Marketing, Social Media Marketing
While I am still unsure about the real value of Twitter in marketing, Rohit Bhargava mentions four ideas of how Twitter can be valueable. I still ain’t convinced completely, but getting there…
Capture the live pulse of an event
This is one of the most popular marketing uses that I have seen for Twitter, where it is used to offer a visual display of conversations happening around an event. More and more interactive events have this, and I suspect other non-Web related events will start to incorporate it as well to offer participants a visual way to track the pulse of an event and determine where to spend time.
Undoubtedly, this could work. The question is: who is the target audience? If it is all those people at the event, who subscribe to one twitter feed about the event, it could be brilliant to let everyone know what is happening elsewhere within the event. If it is for people outside the event, the whole twittersphere of the event will sound like 140-character long gibberish to those not present, I suppose.
Deepen a static experience through live commentary
I saw an interesting story last week about how Fox is going to be using Twitter to promote their new show Drive by having the director provide live updates and directors commentary via Twitter throughout the show. We will definitely be seeing more of this type of marketing in the near future.
This could be nice, but only if the show is live, too. Otherwise, we’ll be reading tweets about stuff that we know nothing about until we see it a few months later on TV.
Facilitate collaborative watching
When it comes to watching video content online or on television, Twitter can allow you to watch something „alongside“ anyone anywhere by sharing your impressions and reading impressions from others as a program unfolds. This is a powerful new method of sharing feedback and ideas
This won’t work, if we truly believe in the end of programmed television. If people are not watching things at the same time, because everyone can watch „on demand“, then how can you share your thoughts with other viewers via twitter? Unless there is a „twitter group“ for that particular movie or series – and I just underestimate the scale of randomness: the fact that for some shows, there will always be somebody, at any given time, watching the same show as myself…
Add a new dimension to promotions
Scavenger hunts, user generated content campaigns, and other reality based marketing promotions are growing popularity as ways to encourage interaction from customers. Twitter can offer a way of encouraging dialogue between promotion participants and adding an „instant message style“ dimension to a promotion without the privacy and contact acceptance barriers normally associated with using IM for marketing.
This, I think, could be a fantastic use for twitter. A connection of customers in Twitter groups during promotions, enabling „swarm intelligence“, as we call it here in Germany, would be a brilliant setup for all sorts of ideas for promos, alternate reality games, real life social games or gatherings, etc.
So, in general, I start to like the idea of using Twitter for marketing, having been sceptical a few weeks / months ago. But I do think, that we still need a lot of refinement to make sure it’s not just a gimmick, but does actually contribute value to campaigns.
von Roland Hachmann | Okt 12, 2006 | Blog, Digital Marketing, Online Advertising
Joseph Jaffe is asking us to take part in his „exercise in futility“.
He asks us to leisurely watch television and then answer a few apparently easy questions:
- how many commercials in totality do you think you watched?
- how many commercials did you remember?
- of these commercials, how many brands did you remember (as opposed to „the one with the bunnies“
- of these commercials, how many do you think told you something you didn’t know, offered up something of value, made you think differently about the brand and/or made you want to buy (or consider to buy) that particular brand/product/service
- Bonus assignment: did any one or more commercials strike you as being particularly original, progressive, innovative in terms of message, call-to-action etc.?
I can see his point. But do take into account: if there was a similar questionnaire about regular online advertising, the result would be similarly bad (or even worse). If I read his book right, then his point is more about the irrelevance of this kind of advertising. Push advertising, unasked for, without any engaging element to it…
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