Tag: advertising

Some Thoughts on the Association for Downloadable Media

Post ImageLast week a new organization calling itself the Association for Downloadable Media launched. The ADM aims to provide standards for advertising and audience measurement for episodic and downloadable media. From their press release:

The ADM will focus primarily on the world of podcasting, downloadable media and portable content monetized by advertising and sponsorship. The ADM will create a landscape that facilitates the commercialization of this growing audience.

Monetization of podcasts is a growing opportunity for these parties, and the ADM supports the momentum of this channel through the collective mindshare of its members.

They have sixteen organizations already on board, including Apple and NPR. Individuals can join for $150/year, for corporations the price is $1000/year.

First of all, I’m not sure the organization is needed. Where are all the content creators and advertisers complaining about the lack of standards? Furthermore, none of the member companies are bound to do anything anyway. They can, however, point to the ADM as an example of how they are “participating in and improving” the industry. Take the five “initial” committees they have already created – isn’t it kind of early to have such committees? Probably, but it makes them look more legitimate.

More importantly, will the ADM really be able to accomplish anything? Aside from Apple and the NPR, the organizations currently on board are small fish in the grand scheme of things. Yes even venture-backed companies like Podshow, PodTech, and Revision3. What happens when NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox jump into the downloadable media market? Or perhaps even other media outlets like the New York Times? The ADM will drown in the ensuing splash, that’s what. The big fish will be able to do whatever they like, regardless of what the ADM has already “standardized.”

One other thing – downloadable media is a fairly broad term, don’t you think? Fairly ambitious of the group to proclaim themselves the association for such a thing.

I hope I’m wrong. I hope the ADM will accomplish great things. I don’t think it’s going to happen though. I suspect the ADM will be nothing more than a distant memory come this time next year. Time will tell!

Read: ADM

More evil stuff from Apple!

Post ImageJust last week I wrote about Apple being evil by requiring iPhone users to have an iTunes account. Now they’re at it again, this time with forced perspective advertising. From BoingBoing:

Lars says: When I viewed the new iPhone site something struck me: did Apple change the dimensions of the unit?

A quick comparison of the official Apple photos revealed they’ve just changed handsize.

I copied the OLD and NEW photos below from BoingBoing. That’s pretty evil isn’t it? The two hand sizes aren’t even close!

There’s more too, all related to the iPhone. On Monday Apple was caught with some false advertising (they incorrectly stated that the Nokia N95 did not have Wi-Fi). And of course, they announced improved battery life and a more durable screen – for a device that you can’t even buy yet!

What’s next Apple?

Read: BoingBoing

Online advertising in Canada is booming

Post ImageThe numbers are in, and it appears that 2006 was an incredibly impressive year for online advertising in the great north. Forget about all the action happening south of the border, Canada is where it’s at! From 901am:

The Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada (IAB) announced that 2006 Canadian Online Advertising Revenues surged to an unprecedented $1.01 billion dollars for the year. The 2006 actuals represent a 26% increase over the $801 million originally estimated by the IAB for 2006; and an 80% increase over the 2005 actuals of $562 million.

Projections for 2007 look really positive too. Mark Evans says:

Still, if you do some back-of-the-napkin calculations, the Canadian market is still only two-thirds that of the U.S. market if you use the traditional 10:1 ratio formula.

I assume by the “10:1 ratio formula” he is normalizing the two markets for comparison purposes. So it’s not as big as the US, but it’s getting damn close.

Read: 901am

Google buys DoubleClick

Post ImageIn a way it’s pretty incredible that “Google” has become synonymous with search. It really should make you think of advertising, and perhaps in 25 years, it will. Today Google ventured further down that rabbit hole, acquiring one of the web’s oldest ad companies (via Scoble):

Google reached an agreement today to acquire DoubleClick, the online advertising company, from two private equity firms for $3.1 billion in cash, the companies announced, an amount that was almost double the $1.65 billion in stock that Google paid for YouTube late last year.

Two days in a row now, I’ve seen news break on Twitter. Last night it was the earthquake in Mexico City, and today this acquisition. This is pretty significant, don’t you think?

Anyway, I don’t think Google buying DoubleClick is earth-shattering news. It’s not much of a stretch if you consider Google to be an advertising company, as I do. What’s more interesting is that Microsoft was apparently trying to purchase DoubleClick too. Why? I can only imagine it was an attempt to harm Google.

Read: NYTimes.com

Video Stuff: Vlog Blind Date, Mesh 07 Contest, Soar & Wow

Post ImageHere are a few interesting video-related posts I have come across in the last day or so:

Vlog Blind Date
This is a really funny and well done video featuring Justine Ezarik. She goes on a blind date with…it’s a surprise! You have to watch to find out. The video was made to promote JumpCut from the looks of things (and with their help, evidently).

The mesh Video Contest
Want to go to mesh for free? Have a talent for creating great video? Then this contest is for you! All you’ve got to do is submit a video that captures the essence of Web 2.0 – “whatever that means to you.” If you win, you get flown to Toronto for free, with the hotel and conference tickets all taken care of. It’s a pretty sweet deal.

Comparing “Soar” and “Wow”
In this post, Long Zheng takes a look at two commercials: one for Windows XP, and one for Windows Vista. It’s quite amazing how different they are. While both are good, I think the Windows XP one is better.

Download Requests Alone Are Pretty Useless

Post ImageBack in December I said that podcasters should gather and share as much statistical data as possible. It is now exactly three months later and, surprise-surprise, I still feel that way. The topic resurfaced on Saturday when Adam Curry from PodShow posted about the number of download requests the PodShow network has received:

For the record, In December 2006 the network produced 52 million download requests.

Earlier today, Paul Colligan picked up on the story, and said:

Yes, Virginia, Podcast download numbers are important. And these are important numbers.

Yes, they are important. And 52 million is an impressive number, especially for just one month. But stating download requests alone is useless. I think they are important to track, but you need to pair them with something else. Something like a completed download.

Understanding the difference between a download request, a partial download, and a completed download can be somewhat confusing, so let’s try this metaphor on for size.

Download Request = Walking into the grocery store with a shopping list in hand
Partial Download = Filling your shopping cart with some of the items on your list
Completed Download = Filling your shopping cart with everything on your list
Partial Play = Eating some of the things you purchased
Completed Play = Eating everything you purchased

It’s important to note that each one is harder and harder to measure. It’s fairly trivial to count the number of people entering the store. It’s a little harder, but still fairly easy to count the number of people who have at least something in the cart. It’s much harder to count the number of people who have everything on their list. And to count the number of partial and completed plays? Much, much harder.

When you have all of these statistics, you get a really nice picture, don’t you? You can see a nice comparison of how many people entered the store and how many people actually bought something. Having just the number of people who entered the store is not that useful though. Sure it has some useful implications – if tons of people come in but don’t buy, maybe we don’t have what they want, or they didn’t like what they saw, etc. That makes sense in the offline world. In the online world though, it’s not just people that make download requests – it’s other applications and services too. It’s like counting every person, stroller, cart, bag, and box that enters the store – and clearly, only people can purchase something! To make matters worse, some applications will make multiple requests for a single download. Imagine a person walking into the store, putting something in the cart, exiting the store and walking back in again to put the second item in the cart.

So download requests are interesting, but they are really only valuable alongside other information like completed downloads. Or a list of which applications made the requests (this would allow you to tell the difference between a person and a stroller, for instance). Citing just the number of download requests will do nothing but mislead.

Have you seen the creepy commercial from Shaw?

Post ImageRegular readers of my blog will know that I don’t worry about online privacy all that much. My gut reaction to new technologies or products is generally not “what about my privacy!” As a result, I was pretty surprised to think about privacy right after seeing the new television commerical from Shaw! A quick search didn’t turn up any videos, so here’s a quick rundown of the commercial in case you haven’t seen it:

The commercial is shot in the familiar “Apple white” environment, with lots of people running around. The voiceover starts talking about Shaw’s technology, noting that Shaw is there “for every conversation, every web search, and every online purchase.” The video depicts these scenarios. The commercial concludes with something similar to, “the greatest thing about our technology, is the people behind it.”

It’s a good overall message, and I think I understand what they were going for. It’s too bad it comes off as kind of creepy. The thought process might go something like this:

  1. Ah Shaw, yah I know this company.
  2. Web search? Oh right my ISP is Shaw.
  3. Conversations? Ahhh yes the new Shaw VOIP!
  4. People behind the technology, that makes sense.
  5. Wait a minute…web searches, purchases, conversations – they know everything about me!

Maybe I’m just reading into it too much, but I think Shaw would have been better off not highlighting all of the various things they could keep track of.

Podcast Advertising Report Roundup

Post ImageeMarketer has managed to garner a ton of buzz today about their forthcoming report on podcasting and marketing in which they estimate that $400 million will be spent in the space by 2011. My only real comment on the report (since I haven’t seen it) is this wonderful quote from NewTeeVee (on an unrelated post):

“The great thing about forecasts is that no one remembers the exact amount when the future finally rolls around.”

Here is a quick roundup of some great quotes from posts discussing the report:

“If you build it, they will come! Or in other words, concentrate on bringing podcasts to a bigger audience, only then can you make advertising work.”
– Marketing Pilgrim

“The increase of video podcasts, which lend themselves to the kind of video ads that marketers are accustomed to developing for television, has also increased advertiser interest.”
– BusinessWeek

“Show me an advertiser that wants to generically market to Podcasts with listening audiences of dozens.”
– Paul Colligan

“Currently, despite some 90,000 podcasts available on the Web and close to 90 million iPods in the market, podcasting is universally thought of as a supplemental medium by advertisers.”
– Mediaweek

“Every once in a while someone accidentally runs into a magic lamp and a guru pops up telling us that Podcasting has already had its 15 minutes and is a fad that is ready to pass.”
– 901am

“Unfortunately, for all you indy podcasters out there, this does not bode well. With all of that competition for ad dollars, the money is going to flow to folks who have ad sales reps.”
– Micro Persuasion

“While I would love to see 400 Million dropped annually into the space, the podcasting listening and producing community is going to have to get a lot bigger.”
– Geek News Central

“As I’ve said before, I think the bigger growth could come from simply making the entire creation process easier.”
– The Viral Garden

I like the last two comments best – they are spot on.

Did Facebook miss the boat?

Post ImageThat’s the question that Robert Young asks over at GigaOM today. Facebook apparently turned down many potential suitors last year, deciding to go it alone. Was that a good decision or a bad one? Robert does a good job of explaining that if you ignore the financial side of things, it looks like it was a good decision:

So given such positives, one might conclude that Facebook did in fact make the right decision not to sell. as momentum and value creation certainly seems to be in their favor.

Overall traffic is up, loyalty and usage stats are high, things look good. The problem is that advertising on Facebook appears to be a win-lose situation – good for Facebook, bad for the advertisers. Which means Facebook is going to have trouble earning revenue.

My personal opinion is that Facebook missed the boat, but that they’ll likely get another shot. The product has incredible value – they are just doing a really shoddy job of extracting it. It’s only a matter of time before they need to be rescued, by Yahoo! or another big player. Whether the rescuer will fare better at extracting value from Facebook is another story.

I’d be quite happy if Yahoo! purchased Facebook, and added support for del.icio.us and Flickr. I don’t upload photos to Facebook because I use Flickr, and I don’t use the share feature at Facebook, because I use del.icio.us. I’d still like to be able to share this stuff with my friends though.

(Another thing: all three products – del.icio.us, Facebook, and Flickr – have a clean and efficient design. That alone should be reason enough to make them play nicely together!)

Read: GigaOM

Why does classmates.com advertise on Facebook?

Post ImageI have been spending far too much time on Facebook lately, so I couldn’t help but notice the vertical banner ads for classmates.com that appear on the site. And I can’t figure out why they bother. I mean, I signed up for classmates.com probably six years ago, and never visited the site again.

Well until this week, when I went back to see if it still sucked (so I suppose you could argue their advertisement worked to an extent). And yes, it does still suck. I understand why there are two gas stations on every corner, and why you can usually find a Wendy’s or Burger King wherever there is a McDonald’s. They have really similar offerings. Is this the case with Facebook and classmates.com? I don’t think so.

Facebook and classmates.com just might be the best examples of Web 2.0 and Web 1.0, respectively.

They are almost polar opposites. Facebook is clean and fast. Classmates.com pages are slower and cluttered. Facebook is entirely free, while classmates.com is primarily a premium service. Facebook has features like photos, blogs, and mobile support. Classmates.com has message boards and biographies. Facebook is new and hip, classmates.com is old and tired.

It seems to me that at their core, the two services serve the same purpose: connecting people with friends (and especially classmates). In my opinion, Facebook does a much better job. It’s easier, and costs nothing. Classmates.com appears to be quite successful though, so I wonder if people use the two in different ways.

If they are in fact used for the same purpose, then I wonder if advertising on Facebook is at all effective for classmates.com. I can’t imagine it would be, but perhaps I’m missing something here.