Internet Marketing Blog

Interruption Advertising

ABC announced this week they would offer select television shows like Lost and Desperate Housewives for free through cable television on-demand services with the caveat that viewers will not be able to skip through commercials.

I understand television is struggling to retain advertising dollars that are quickly slipping through their fingers to more effective media, but this isn't the way to do it.

People are increasingly becoming accustomed to either on-demand advertising and marketing or product placement. The more you interrupt them with advertising that is probably not relevant to their needs, the more you annoy them by wasting their time.

People will probably watch ABC's on-demand offerings, but they will no doubt do what they've always done, ignore the commercials by getting up and doing other stuff while they run. A significant percentage of cable viewers will simply DVR their favorite shows rather than use on-demand service for the very reason that they then can skip over the commercials.

The solution to hemorrhaging ad dollars is not more interruptions, but smarter ads through product placement and eventually, if the technology permits, some form of interactive TV, where, if you're interested, you can click on a product within a show for more information.

I don't know that I have the right answer but I do know that traditional television advertising is broken and the networks and cable channels need to figure it out or more and more entertainment will be produced by the advertisers themselves.

And perhaps that's inevitable.

The Evolution Of A Viral Video

In 2005, Sony ran a television ad campaign for their Bravia LCD television display that used bright colored superballs bouncing through the streets of San Francisco, filmed by director Nicolai Fuglsig, and set to José González's song Heartbeats. It is a sight to behold:

The incredible piece took on a life of it's own online and inspired mashups like this one that uses the Battlefield 2 video game:

And a take-off commercial for Tango Clear:

To, finally, a political protest by an Italian artist (don't artists pride themselves on their originality? Just asking.):

The End Of Nostalgia Marketing

  prince 
  Originally uploaded by A N G E L

If you've read my blog on a fairly regular basis, you know that I'm a music fan and, as a result, fascinated with music marketing. Music marketing is especially fascinating to me because, as Seth Godin points out in his Music Lessons post, since the music industry is falling apart, it provides a unique glimpse into the rise and innovation of online marketing and a demonstration of conversational marketing.

It began to dawn on me as I began following MP3 blogs that due to the phenomenal variety and volume of music that is now easily accessible through MySpace and MP3 blog aggregators like elbo.ws and Hype Machine, through music discovery services like last.fm and popular music blogs like stereogum, indiefeed and Aquarium Drunkard, the audience for bands and musicians is fragmenting radically. Music is no longer easily classified by genre.

This phenomenon has been discussed by New York Times columnist David Brooks and was recently a topic of conversation for Minnesota Public Radio's Midmorning program.

For the music fan in me, this fragmentation is fantastic because it means I have a vast array of new (for me) music to which, until now, I would never have had access.

But the marketer in me sees the death of nostalgia marketing. For whatever reason, music has a unique ability to trigger emotions. I have memories of listening to the hit songs of 70s rock bands through the crackly AM band on my dad's transistor radio. Songs from the 80s spark general memories of my college years.

It is because of this phenomenon that you see the nostalgia marketing of music compilation CDs from a given era through late night infomercials replete with your "hosts" saying remember when all the time. I couldn't find an actual example on YouTube, but this is a clever spoof of those infomercials that gets the idea across:

Specific songs recall specific events and that phenomenon will remain. But because the channels through which we hear music are now practically infinite--terrestrial-, Internet-, and HD-radio stations, television, YouTube, music blogs and podcasts, our phones and video games--the concept of a broadly popular music star is fading away.

The same dynamic will likely hold true for movies and television programming.

With no broadly popular music star or movie or television show, the common touchstone, the shared experience of liking the similar thing that makes nostalgia marketing work, is eliminated. Is, then, nostalgia marketing viable? I think not. At least not on a broad scale.

MacBook Air - Ultra-Cool Technology, Flawed Premise

Let me start by saying that I've never owned an Apple computer and I've never been an Apple guy but since the iPod, I've certainly been willing to consider becoming an Apple fanboy. I'm more also likely than most to champion a cool new computer, because I'm fascinated with technology.

So, fresh off the Macworld Expo, I gotta say I've blown away by the insanely thin MacBook Air. I mean, look at the thing!

What first-adopter worth the name could not lust after such a product?

Still, the premise behind the product is that people will want two computers. I don't buy it and wouldn't buy it for that very reason. As Computerworld's Scott Finnie points out:

From the specs, Apple's design decision was to target its new subnotebook at existing Mac users as a second computer for the road. But that's not what people want. They want one computer that can do all things. It's not what enterprises want, they want to buy only one computer per employee. And it's certainly not what home users want. Without the ability to easily expand when you're back at the ranch, the MacBook Air is an amazing prototype without a real market.

  macbook air 
  Originally uploaded by wingfish

But I would definitely use it if we had that Gdrive that I've been ranting about so I could use the MacBook Air as my computer processor, the technology with which I perform all my work, but access my data from a remote hard drive through broadband streaming. In that scenario, the lightweight sub-notebook that flash drives make possible would be ideal for me because I practically carry my computer wherever I go.

I don't think we're that far away from my ideal but there are still obstacles. Though, as Julio Ojeda-Zapata points out, Apple is pushing wireless access hard with this product but the reliability of Wi-Fi connections has thus far hardly been rock solid. He says, "I predict some problems since I have not found any Wi-Fi hookup to be as rock-solid reliable as Ethernet. I've lost count of the times I've plugged in at the office when a wireless connection went flaky."

But I'm perfectly willing and eager to make the jump when the stars align.

Trend For 2008: TV Ad Bugets Shift To Social Media

I finally had a chance to catch up on some podcasts over the holiday weekend while driving to and from relatives.

This is from last month, but it's significant so I want to share with you the thoughts of the founder of the Weber Shandwick Worldwide PR firm Larry Weber's views on where budgets are shifting and, by extension, where the PR industry is headed.

The following quotes are from the 11/16/07 On The Record...Online podcast:

"...That's going to shift in the next three years [the percentage of budget devoted to TV advertising versus PR]. This year alone, we'll spend $110 billion on broadcast television in the United States alone. PR, probably, in this country...seven billion in fees, maybe six and a half billion in fees.

"So a huge disparity, correct?

"But as social media takes over, as ecommunities, as blogsphere self-edits, you know, as reputation aggregators like Google, MSN, grow in their influence--Yahoo--you're going to see shifts of those television dollars because at its worst analytic, AdAge said a quarter of that $110 billion will be DVRed or Tivoed, if you use that service.

"So, to go into a CEO and go 'We've flushed $25, $30 billion--we don't know where it went because nobody watched the ads'--there's no way; why wouldn't you start building communities? Why wouldn't you start reaching out to digital media?

"So, I think there's going to be a much bigger shift of taking those budgets and moving them to PR/social media, building of customer communities, and I think it's going to be an exciting time for a shift in marketing focus."

On The Current Stage Of Social Media/Marketing 

"We're just at the beginning and it's first generation, so, you know, I liken it in my speeches and in my book, I liken it to the first years of television advertising in the 1950s where all you did was, a guy held up a box of soap and said 'This gets your clothes whiter.' That was it.

"So, we're at the very beginning of understanding the social media landscape, of which networks are being built, where the conversations are being had."

Is Search Engine Advertising Trustworthy?

Eye-tracking heat maps of search results pages generally reveal that most searchers' focus is on the top, left hand third of the natural search result links rather than on the spaces devoted to search engine advertising.

It begs the question of whether search engine advertising, as opposed to natural search engine marketing, is effective at all.

A 2007 Nielsen study (via Micropersuasion) offers some data that would seem to support that assertion.  The study found that the most trusted forms of advertising are:

1. Recommendations from consumers - 78%
2. Newspapers - 63%
3. Consumer opinions posted online - 61%
4. Brand websites - 60%
5. Television - 56%

Conversely, the least trusted forms of advertising are:

1. Email I signed up for - 49%
2. Ads before movies - 38%
3. Search engine ads - 34%
4. Online banner ads - 26%
5. Text ads on mobile phones - 18%

I have always emphasized natural search engine marketing over search engine advertising for the very reason that people consider the links in the natural search results to be more credible and therefore more trustworthy and as a result they will be more likely to click on those links.

The fact that few people consider search engine advertising trustworthy while many people trust brand websites is a compelling argument for emphasizing natural search engine marketing over paid search advertising.

That does not mean that I think search engine advertising doesn't work, though. Clearly, Google would not be thriving due to its search engine ad revenue if the service didn't produce results.

While people do trust natural search results more, the same dynamic is probably at work as it is with traditional advertising.

People do not tend to pay attention to advertising until it's relevant to them; that is, until they are in the market for what is being advertising. I'd love to see a study on it, but I'd be willing to bet that as people move closer to a purchase decision, the search engine ads would increasingly be perceived as more and more trustworthy.

The Advertising Show Podcast

Despite my belief that traditional advertising is broken, I really do enjoy The Advertising Show podcast. It's actually a weekly Internet radio show that is available as a podcast, but that's a distinction without much of a difference. It's streamed every Sunday at 5 p.m. Eastern Time.

The Advertising Show hosts Brad Forsythe and Ray Schilens discuss marketing, advertising, branding and media.

Regular features of the show include interviews with industry insiders and experts, a regular segment called "The Marketing Insider" by Patrick Meyer, who "provides insight into today’s cutting edge branding and marketing strategies," another segment called "The Customer Experience" by Jeanne Bliss; special program features include "Advertiser's Showcase" that highlights an outstanding example of effective advertising and "Badvertising" which cites examples of ineffective ads and offers constructive criticism to help listeners learn from other advertisers' mistakes.

While focused primarily on traditional advertising, the show is entertaining and informative even for an Internet marketer like me because at the end of the day, Internet marketing is just a different type of advertising and marketing. Much of the information in the show is entirely relevant to online marketing.

My only real complaint is that the hosts occasionally make partisan political comments that are not relevant to the show and are therefore, if you don't agree with them, likely offensive, especially since you're not expecting them.

Nevertheless, the show is definitely worth the time.

The most recent program featured Spot Runner's CEO Nick Grouf who "explains how his company is revolutionizing how advertising is created, targeted, and purchased."

Why Traditional Advertising Is Broken

So I'm watching the Vikings game last Sunday and, for a change, I'm watching it live rather than as I usually do, a half hour after kickoff so I can fast forward through the commercials using my DVR. As a result, of course, I was forced to endure the commercials.

I'm forced to watch ridiculous commercials demonstrating a certain super duty pickup truck's ability to tow a cargo plane. Let me ask you, how often do you find a need to tow a cargo plane?

I get more and more annoyed as the game goes on and I have to watch this carpet bombing of stupid commercials that are absolutely irrelevant to yours truly.

The whole time I'm thinking this whole process is a colossal waste of money and effort. Both myself and the advertiser are losing in this attempt at communication; my time is going to just as must waste as the advertiser's money. I'm not their target market and I never will be and the advertiser is paying millions of dollars for a two to five percent return.

And, you must know, this is coming from someone who really likes advertising; good advertising, anyway.

Someone forgot to tell television advertisers that we live in an on-demand, self-selected world. I want ads on my own terms and now I have the tools to enforce that desire.

This video I found at Marketing Pilgrim nicely demonstrates the problem with traditional advertising. It was produced by Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions:

Augmented Reality Marketing

Remember the scene from Minority Report where Chief John Anderton walks through a shopping mall and personalized advertisements jump out at him from each store? That's Steven Spielberg's vision of augmented reality:

Spielberg's portrayal of the future of advertising probably isn't that far off the mark, except I'd think there would be far less clutter and the marketing would be less in your face and more targeted and useful and on demand.

Rather than basically having customized TV ads pop out at you wherever you go, think of augmented reality marketing as essentially a transparent overlay addition to your vision from which you can "click" for more information on a given thing in your environment.

Say you're walking through a shopping mall just like John Anderton but instead of getting unsolicited ads popping up at you, you get the equivalent of a hyperlink anchored to the store you are currently seeing. If you select that link, you can get the essential information about the store just as you currently can from Google Maps. You could save that information for later reference. You could view promotional content from the store itself. You read user-submitted reviews of the store. Or you could compare their prices and/or promotions with another store you've already saved.

Or maybe you're walking down 7th Street in Minneapolis passing the famous nightclub First Avenue and you want to see who will be playing there this week. Select the  events calendar that is augmented onto the building and you can see the bands playing this week and listen to a few of their songs or simply order tickets for a show.

About 38 seconds into this video, there's an example of how such an augmented reality might look:

This photo is an imagining of what directions might look like in augmented reality:

Augmented Reality Directions
Originally uploaded by kokogiak

This Flickr user has created a nice mashup of how augmented reality might look as a reputation system.

Augmented reality mobile phone concept
Originally uploaded by Leonard Low

The technology for such a future already exists. There are plenty of people working on wearable computing products, including data glove input devices. Broadband wireless access is growing in major metropolitan areas. The success of the iPhone points the way to the consolidation of Internet-connected communication devices. GPS-enabled cell phone adoption is growing. Camera technology gets smaller and sharper by the minute, it seems. Lightweight, flexible video screens exist. Geographic business data already exists at Internet yellow pages and Yahoo! Local and Google Local.

All of the required technology exists to make this sci-fi vision a reality, it's just a matter of pulling it all together and miniaturizing it to the point  that it's practical for everyday use.

Will Google's Video Ad Network Expand The Embeddable Web?

Steve Rubel argued yesterday that web site traffic metrics are increasingly irrelevant "So debating which sites drive the most traffic is really meaningless."

I think he will eventually be proved right, so I agree with his assertion that we need a new way to measure Internet activity. One primary reason for this is that content is becoming radically decentralized, so it is no longer nearly as important to drive people to a given location on the Web.

Google's recent announcement that they will include YouTube videos in their AdSense advertising network will go a long way toward decentralizing video content. Video content providers will be able to earn money by placing their videos in the network and web sites will be able to earn money from hosting the ads.

If   you want to get me going on a rant, bring up the fact that many organizations prohibit embedding of their video. As I've said before and I'll no doubt say again, prohibiting embedding is nearly always against the content provider's best interests. 

Most local television news sites now host videos of their broadcasts but most also prohibit embedding of that video, offering a simple hyperlink as their concession to "sharing." But the conversation happens elsewhere, primarily at blogs or other online forums. Bloggers would happily embed newscasts when discussing current events. Embedded newscasts provides easy and free product placement that builds brand awareness for the local network affiliate.

Happily, Google has just provided monetary incentive for content producers to allow embedding of their videos and that should help spread the love.

Search Traffic Convinces NY Times To Adopt Pure Ad Revenue Model

The New York Times announced yesterday that they would discontinue their TimesSelect online subscription program and open up nearly all of their content to the online world for free.

For $49.95 a year, subscribers had access to the paper's columnists' articles and the archives. There will be fees "for some [archive] material from the period 1923 to 1986."

Though TimesSelect had 227,000 paying subscribers from a base of  787,000 users, and earned the paper about $10 million a year in revenue, the volume of abandoned visitors from the search engines convinced the Times that they would make more money through online advertising than they would through web site subscription fees.

NYTimes.com gets 13 million unique visitors a month and figure they can use that volume coupled with registered user demographics and visitor behavior statistics to offer advertisers the ability to buy behaviorally-targeted advertising.

I've got to think that the decision to optimize the site for search engine marketing coupled with the buying of search engine keyword ads for breaking news helped drive traffic to the site. When they looked at their bounce rate--the percentage of users who abandoned the site when they bumped up against the paid content wall--they realized the pure advertising revenue model might just work.

I would not be surprised if the Times' next step would be to make more of their content embeddable and shareable online to drive traffic from blogs and online bookmark services and to add a commenting feature to articles to encourage visitors to stay at the site longer.

Google's Problem With Paid Links

I've been meaning to write about this but, you know, hey, whaddya gonna do? Things get in the way.  But the topic came up again when reviewing a potential client's web site that looked like it was at risk of being penalized by Google because of paid links. So, though the topic may be a bit dated, it's still relevant.

In April, Matt Cutts, Google's search engine marketing liaison, explained the company's attitude toward paid links and clarified in May. In short, the search engine does not like them because some search engine marketers use them to try and improve the ranking of their site in Google's search results.  As such, Google considers them Web spam.

You need not worry if you've been buying links from reputable, legitimate sites and not link brokers. Google won't penalize you for that but, if the site linking to you is viewed very favorably by Google, you will incur no benefit from that site linking to you. That's often the reason people buy links, to get Google to think of your site favorably because of a link from a site the search engine already views as very favorably.

Google's Paid Link Policy

Google's paid link policy is an eminently reasonable practice to keep Web spam from its search results. Google wants its search results to be as relevant and precise as possible because that keeps people using the service and the search engine's user base is what drives ad sales.

But the policy calls into question how Google will treat paid links that are not necessarily intended to game their search results or links that are intended to boost the linked-to site's search ranking yet are topically relevant.

Let me explain.

Buying Topical Links

Let's say I have a baseball blog that I've been posting to for a while but haven't really marketed in anyway. The traffic to it is low and I've finally decided I want to grow my readership. But I want to do it relatively quickly because the post-season is approaching and readership for baseball blogs in general is going to rise and my team, the Minnesota Twins, will likely make the playoffs. (Hey, they did it last year!) This will be my prime opportunity of the year to tap into a large audience.

So, I plan on buying some links from Twins blogs and I'll buy links from a few blogs that cover Major League Baseball in general but are not devote to a specific team. In both cases, the topics of the sites I'm going to buy links from and my own blog are the same: The Minnesota Twins and baseball.

Boosting Search Engine Ranking Through Link Popularity

My purpose for buying these links is to grow my own audience, so I obviously want those sites' visitors to visit and read my blog and become part of my readership. But I'd also like to try and get some search engine traffic, so I'm going to use relevant keywords in my link text. My link text will read "Visit my Minnesota Twins blog" to try and rank well in the search engines for the phrase "Minnesota Twins Blog."

Why should should Google disapprove of my links, much less penalize me for them?

As I said, Google needs quality search results to make money from advertising. But my link buying campaign is doing nothing to affect the quality of the search engine's results.

Let's say that I post daily, sometimes more, that I'm a brilliant baseball mind and a superb writer, so the content of my blog is of the highest quality. If my site ranks highly because of my link campaign, I'm improving the quality of Google's results for the phrase "Minnesota Twins blog" because my blog is as good as if not better than the rest that are listed. And a link to my blog precisely matches what the searcher wants.

Though they don't say specifically, it would make no sense for Google to penalize this type of Internet marketing because it only helps Google improve their results. It's a win-win for both my blog and Google's quality. So I have to think Google will not frown on such paid links.

That's the approach I take to search engine marketing: Help Google improve their search engine results by including my clients' high-quality, relevant content in their results. Such an approach is in everyone's long-term interests: Mine, my clients' and Google's.

Advertising Techniques - 12 Categories

Last week, Slate's Seth Stevenson explained the 12 master advertising formats as articulated in 1978 by Leo Burnett's Donald Gunn. These techniques still hold true today and in the YouTube age, are just as relevant. They are:

1. The demonstration
2. Show the problem
3. Symbolize the problem
4. Symbolize the benefit
5. Comparison
6. Exemplary story
7. Benefit causes story
8. Testimonial
9. Ongoing characters/celebrities
10. Associated user imagery
11. Unique personality property
12. Parody/borrowed

Ask.com TV Ad Targeted To SEMs?

I confess I don't quite understand what Ask.com is trying to do with their current television commercial (I saw it during a recent Colbert Report):

Algorithm?!? Who, aside from search engine marketers (SEMs), understands what that means? I seriously doubt they're going to increase their market share among general search engine users with this commercial.

So, assuming, of course, that Ask knows what they're doing with this commercial, the only explanation I can offer is that they are trying to get SEMs to optimize web sites for Ask.com in an attempt to improve the relevance their search results.

Online Ads & Sponsorships For Nonprofit Fundraising

My friend Ann Treacy of Treacy Information Systems and I presented a session on Leveraging Online Ads and Sponsorships to Stretch Your Budget (Fundraising) for the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits' annual conference, "Common Ground for Common Good." These are some of the resources we mentioned during the breakout session:

• Power Point Presentation

Advertising Networks:

• Google AdSense - For displaying Google ads on your site
  • Inside Google AdSense - Google's official AdSense blog.
• Yahoo Publisher Network - For displaying Yahoo ads on your site
  • Yahoo Publisher Network Blog - Yahoo's offical Publisher Network blog.
• Clicksor - For displaying Clicksor ads on your site
• Digital Point Forum Discussion on making money from online ads

Keyword Research:

• Wordtracker - Professional level keyword research tool. Culls data from a wide range of search engines and is therefore more comprehensive and accurate than free services. Fees range from per day to per year.
• Keyword Discovery - Another professional level keyword research tool similar to Wordtracker.
• Overture Inventory Tool - Shows search volume by month. Data is culled from their pay-per-click search engine.
• SEO Book's Keyword Suggestion Tool - Based on Overture's search data, which, again, is biased toward commercial searches. Still, an excellent tool.
• Google Sandbox - AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool - Find releated keywords. This free tool is included in Google's AdWords search advertising service. You can determine the level of competition for a given search phrase--at least within Google's ad inventory--and the relative search volume of that search phrase.
• Google Trends - See how specific search phrases fare over time.

Statistics Programs:

• Google Analytics - Free but requires a Gmail account, which is also free. Superb and comprehensive statistics.
• Statcounter - Designed to be used with blogs but works for web sites as well. Good for a quick glance at your traffic volume and recent visitor activity.
• AddFreeStats - Notice it's ADD-free not AD-free stats. The code displays their logo on your site. Nevertheless, it's free and they offer very comprehensive stats that get down to the individual page level.
• Performancing Metrics - Also designed for use with blogs, but suitable for web sites as well.

Affiliate Marketing:

• Amazon Associates - Amazon's affliate marketing program.
• Commission Junction - One stop signup and clearinghouse for affiliate programs.
• Good Search - A search service geared toward generating revenue for nonprofits.
• Affiliate Tips - An affiliate marketing blog.
• Affiliate Marketing Today - Internet radio program from Webmaster Radio.

Blog Services:

• Blogger - Free service offered by Google.
• TypePad - Free and for-fee service. More features and more flexible than Blogger. This blog uses TypePad.
• WordPress - Free and for-fee service. Similar to TypePad but is more technical.
• eponym - Very similar to but not as widely used as TypePad. Offers both free and for-fee levels.

Social Networking Sites:

• Del.icio.us - Most popular social bookmarking site; recenty bought by Yahoo.
• Yahoo MyWeb - Yahoo's home-grown social bookmarking site.
• The Social Bookmarking Faceoff - Read/Write Web's overview of social bookmarking.
• MySpace - One of the most popular web sites. Social networking site geared toward a mainly 13-25 year old audience includes blogging and video upload features.
• Flickr - Most popular photo sharing site. Owned by Yahoo.
• YouTube - The most popular video sharing web site.
• dogooder.tv - Video sharing site for nonprofits.
• Social Bookmarking Demonstration - A how-to video from Minnesota e-democracy on the basics of how to use del.icio.us, YouTube, and Flickr.
• Digg - The most popular social editing site. Submit web pages and the community votes on them. Most popular posts rise to the front page and can generate a lot of traffic to that page.

Email Marketing:

• Constant Contact - For-fee email marketing service. Best value for cost.
• Coollist - Free but limited email marketing service. Only supports text-based emails.
• Messagebot - Also free and also limited email marketing service.
• Zookoda - Specifically designed for use with blogs. Free service.

A Second Life For An Advertisement

Sometimes, like Michael J. Fox, you need to go back in time to see the future.

I recently started to see the Seinfeld/Superman "Webisodes" pop up on video sharing sites such as YouTube. I'd fogotten about them but they were very much ahead of their time and now they are enjoying a renewed interest in a broadband, web sharing era.

Quick history lesson: In 2004, American Express launched an online campaign by recruiting Jerry Seinfeld to star in two five minute movies with an animated Superman with plots centered on the American Express credit card. The two pieces were directed by Barry Levinson (Wag the Dog, Rain Man, Good Morning, Vietnam). Read more and watch the "webisodes" at my video blog.

It's clear what's going on here. Superman-related search traffic is surging due to the upcoming movie Superman Returns and that interest has unearthed the old American Express Webisodes. It certainly has nothing to do with anything American Express has done to promote the videos recently. The old address at which the Webisodes were hosted (americanexpress.com/jerry) no longer exists. That speaks volumes about the shortsightedness of most coporations and the percieved shelf-life of their marketing assets. And the Seinfeld/Superman pieces were a huge hit at the time.

Last month I wrote about how advertising must adapt to this new broadband, time-shifted environment by evolving from an interruptive medium to an entertainment vehicle in an of itself.

It seems to me that American Express created the model I'm talking about in 2004. The Webisodes were clever, entertaining, and featured the product solving a consumer problem.

If American Express had launched a similar effort today, we would be calling it a Video Marketing campaign. As it is, their video assets continue to work for them, riding the unexpected wave of interest in Superman. And they haven't lifted a finger.

But the only reason this fan propelled branding is possible is that they created advertising that is enterrtaining in and of itself. That's the kind of stuff that people like to share, and now they've got the tools to easily share them.

Technorati tags: superman | seinfeld | seinfeld superman commercials | superman returns | american express | advertising

Mid Terms Will Squeeze Twin Cities Ad Inventory

"A media-buying frenzy related to the 2006 mid-term elections could create significant shortages -- and increase the cost -- of broadcast and other ad space in many cities and states during the next six months," says the American Association of Advertising Agencies, MediaPost reports.

Due to the number of open, competitive races, coupled with increased contribution limits, this year's mid-term congressional election season has more of a presidential year feel to it, from an ad-buying perspective.

Twin Cities advertisers should take this into account because the Minneapolis/St. Paul market is among those that are expected to have especially tight inventory.

Technorati tags: television advertising | minnesota television advertising | twin cities television advertising | minneapolis/st. paul television advertising | advertising inventory | political advertisingmid-term elections

Disney's Response To The Demise Of Television Advertising

ClickZ details the Disney company's response to the end of television advertising and some of the particulars are interesting.

The two-month experiment called My ABC will offer netizens ad-supported downloads of hit ABC shows like Lost and Desperate Housewives. Viewers cannot skip the ads but they will be able to choose between a traditional TV commercial or an interactive advergame.

It's a cautious, tentative step in the right direction.

Update: Ken Newsome has an excellent post on Disney's project.

Technorati tags: television advertising | internet advertising | video advertising | vod | video on demand | streaming video | video downloads | disney | abc | my abc | lost | desperate housewives

Chevy Tahoe Citizen Marketing Campaign

Last night I got an email from a friend that he'd received from a friend who had entered the consumer generated ad contest by at ChevyApprentice.com and promoted on The Apprentice. The promotion invites you to create your own TV ad for the Chevy Tahoe, using a very slick web site where you can drag, drop, and edit multimedia assets such as video, music, and text to create your ad.

The email, which had originally been posted to a few lefty nonprofit email formus, contained links to spoof or political commentary Chevy Tahoe ads at YouTube, mostly SUV-bashing anti-global warming messages.

Some of them are amusing and some are just preachy. Here are some examples:

What Would Jesus Drive?

W.M.D.

Hosted at the ChevyApprentice.com site:

• You Keep Buying Them

Conventional wisdom seems to be that GM made a colossal mistake with this citizen marketing campaign. Nightline did a segment last night on the campaign that captures that angle:

Adrants makes the point that "if left unedited, [this Chevy Tahoe campaign would be] one of the better consumer-created marketing promotions...If all we saw on that site were glowing praises of the vehicle, the promotion would simply be seen as just another lame attempt at capitalizing on a trend and a giant corporation trying to thrust it's twisted version of reality upon us."

I agree. And it appears that the folks in charge of the campaign anticipated ads that would mock the product. A New York Times article on the campaign quotes  Chevrolet spokeswoman Melisa Tezanos,  saying "We anticipated that there would be critical submissions. You do turn over your brand to the public, and we knew that we were going to get some bad with the good. But it's part of playing in this space."

I think the positives far outweigh the negatives in this case. Think about it. The most biting anti-ads are those that have to do with global warming and the people with whom those ads resonate aren't going to buy a Chevy Tahoe. No way. No how. They'll never be potential Tahoe customers.

I'm more their target consumer. I drive a gas-guzzling Jeep Wrangler, so if I were looking for a new ride, I could be a potential customer. And you know what? I don't appreciate the holier than thous telling me I'm immoral for buying an SUV. I doubt I'm alone. In that sense, these anti-ad might even innoculate Chevy a bit against the anti-SUV sentiment.

On the plus side, GM has garnered a ton of free media from the campaign. A lot more people know there's a new Tahoe out than they did before and if the controversy has piqued their interest enough, they've probably watched it in action.

Even before Chevy has picked the winning ad.

How many times have we read stories about Corporation X sending cease and desist letters over things they don't like. Even if it's begrudging, GM is getting points for not trying to censor the negative ads.

Finally, the campaign has also created a lot of online buzz, with people blogging about it or posting to YouTube.

For an awareness campaign, you can't get much better than that.

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The End Of Television Advertising

I've been thinking a lot about television advertising because I haven't really been paying that much attention to TV ads lately.

I am a big fan of good TV ads but the problem is now, if I want to watch one, I have to remember to push Play as I'm skipping through them on my DVR. My current media diet is almost entirely time-shifted. About the only things I'm certain to watch live are sporting events and breaking news.

That's the major malfunction television as an advertising medium is increasingly suffering.

TV ads as blocks of content separate and apart and interruptive of non-advertising content is an art that must die or simply find another distribution channel because it is increasingly clear that it no longer works in it's present form.

Perhaps the 15-, 30-, and 60-second ad spot can survive and even thrive as an entertaining marketing vehicle consumed on company web sites or as pasteable blog fodder or video uploads at the YouTubes of the world.

Considering that in such a trackable environment where the audience is most likely watching the ad because they want to, I can only guess that they'd be that much more effective.

Broadband Internet access is quickly becoming ubiquitous. TV-centric, Internet-ready entertainment devices as the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 video game consoles are poised to become the focal point of the high definition home entertainment future. Microsoft's Media Center software streams music and movies from your computer to your home entertainment system.

And, finally, with devices such as Sony's LocationFree player for the PlaySation Portable, you'll be able to place-shift as well as time-shift by watching the contents of your DVR on your PSP through a wireless Internet connection. Entertainment on demand, whereever you are. 

What all this adds up to the eventual merging of the television, the home PC, and the mobile device and all connected through the Internet.

In that environment, the old fashioned 20th century TV spot is dead but a new form of interactive product placement could well thrive.

The fact that product placement is already becoming much more common is a testament to the fact that Tivo is destroying the traditional TV ad. (Last Sunday, a promo for the new Ice Age movie was written directly into the script of The Family Guy).

There's really no reason that we can't eventually have entirely interactive television so that we could click on or in some way manipulate products that are placed in our entertainment programming, in order to get more information about that product.

Such a marketing vehicle would satisfy consumers because they would decide when or if their show would be interrupted and it would satisfy marketers because there would be an addtional measurement metric by which they could judge effectiveness and they could more easily and effectively find qualified leads.

Technorati tags: television advertising | tv ads | interactive television | interactive tv ads | product placement | interactive product placement | dvr | tivo | time shifting | place shifting | on demand entertainment | microsoft | media center | xbox 360 | playstation 3 | playstation portable | psp | sony | locationfree | ice age | the famliy guy |