Category: youth

Video Metrics: “gauged by the millisecond” [Annals of Social Media Marketing]

The Obama Administration’s use of social media and analytics should trigger a serious debate.  How much information on citizens and others do we really want the government to have?  As part of the discussion, consider this excerpt from social marketing company’s RockYou’s pitch to advertisers and others [our bold].  This about the Feds tracking as you watch government-funded videos:

“…Social Video Ads and Cross Platform Video Distribution on the RockYou Ads Network…Looking at the landscape of online advertising – on social networks and beyond – it’s obvious that video advertising is the medium of choice for brands and marketers who have a story to tell…Video metrics go far beyond impressions. Audience interactions (views, stops, rewinds, sharing) are gauged by the millisecond and response can be measured, in real numbers. Advertisers who can combine that data with behavioral or demographic profiling, to reach exact targets, get amazing results. 

Memo to Acting FCC Chair Michael Copps on Cable TV “Branded Storytelling”: A Tour of Embedded TV Advertising

Dear Mr. Chairman:

We are emailing you the link to this week’s Advertising Age’s story called “Designing a Custom Fit: Cable Offering more integrated, multiplatform deals.”  If you needed any additional evidence that the business model that further merges programming content with advertising requires scrutiny, debate, and safeguards (especially in the youth market), we offer the following article excerpts as evidence.  Clearly, the comedy writers are creating the marketing strategies for some of the cable programming networks.  But I’ve put a few of the best lines in bold:

Call it extreme sponsorship.

As advertisers look for maximum returns on their media investments, cable networks are offering an increasing number of creative, customized and multiplatform ways to partner with marketer brands—and to make sure viewers are paying attention.

The options for integrated marketing have gone far beyond a title sponsorship or a simple product placement. Today the buzzwords are “content-mercials,” “intromercials,” “branded storytelling” and custom marketing. Network series stars are featured in marketers’ commercials—and marketers’ products have a starring role in hit series…USA Network’s approach is to treat an advertiser’s brand as a supporting character in its multiplatform “Characters Welcome” credo. “Our network is not about one genre or one demographic. We are about characters. We celebrate the character of your brand,” says Chris McCumber, exec VP-marketing, digital and brand strategy for USA Network…

USA’s hottest show right now is “Burn Notice.” In its inaugural season, “Burn Notice” partnered with Saab 9-3 for an online game, “Covert Ops,” that allowed users to “drive” a virtual Saab all over Miami…In “Covert Ops,” “while you are playing the game, you are using the elements of Saab. The game drew more leads to Saab.com than the number of cars available to sell,” Mr. McCumber says. “The gaming area has incredible opportunities for brand integration.”…USA’s on-air integrations include using Hoover vacuums to “sweep” graphics off the screen during “Clean House.”…

On A&E Television Networks’ History, Subaru is a presenting sponsor for the upcoming “Expedition Africa: Stanley & Livingstone.”…

“We provided the explorers at certain points in the expedition [in four episodes] with the Subaru—where it made sense,” says Mel Berning, exec VP-ad sales for A&E Television Networks.

The integrations highlight features such as trunk space capacity and vehicle toughness off-road. Thirty-second “content-mercials” will run in every episode…AMC is promoting its Branded Storytelling—a way for advertisers to tell their brand stories through AMC’s programming, says Bill Rosolie, AMC exec VP-sales….Examples include: Takeovers, where marketers can own an entire episode, movie or day with their messages; Matching Moments, where AMC breaks the action with a sponsored pod that directly follows relevant content; and “Matching Attributes,” where brands’ messages are connected to key movie content by using custom creative to run within the film…

Nickelodeon has made multiplatform integration central to its ad sales efforts. This year Nick teamed with Walmart for an integrated effort celebrating the 10th anniversary of the No. 1 kids show, “Sponge Bob Square Pants.” The plan included TV, print and online media backed by in-store support. The Happy Place inside its Walmart stores offered exclusive Sponge Bob merchandise. A microsite (www.spongebobhappyplace.com) requests a sign-on code, only available at Walmart stores, to allow visitors access to exclusive content.

In 2008 Nick and AT&T joined efforts on a Web site where kids could text “iCarly,” get an iCarly ringtone, view cool gadgets (such as the Palm Centro or the AT&T Slate) and see a sneak peek of the iCarly movie “iGo to Japan,” which aired last November.

source:  Designing a Custom Fit.  Nancy Coltun Webster.  Ad Age.  May 4, 2009

Cable Giants Canoe Ventures and Your Set-top Box Data [Annals of Telling Congress One Thing, But Insiders Another]

From a November 2008 report on Canoe CEO David Verklin’s speech at the “NewTeeVee Live” conference.  Excerpts:  Canoe Ventures outlined its strategy today at the NewTeeVee Live conference in San Francisco, where David Verklin, the CEO, outlined the cable industry’s answer to the competition from online video…“Data is the new creative,” Verklin said. He said Canoe thinks the key to that data is the set-top box that’s already hooked up to the televison. That box can tell advertisers exactly how many people are watching an ad.

And this excerpt on Comcast’s data mining warehouse from a January 2009 report in Multichannel News.  Excerpt:  Comcast has sketched out plans for a gigantic database called “TV Warehouse,” able to store a full year of statistics gathered from digital set-tops in more than 16 million households nationwide, according to an industry executive familiar with the project.  TV Warehouse, envisioned as having a massive 500 Terabytes of storage, would then feed up to a database even broader in scope operated by Canoe Ventures, the advanced-advertising venture formed by Comcast and five other large MSOs.  The idea: to give advertisers an enormous set of actual viewing metrics — showing exactly what millions of cable customers watched and when — as opposed to representative samples.

Canoe CEO David Verklin has said the venture expects in the near future to provide viewing metrics for 32 million U.S. cable households, representing about 57 million set-tops.  “One of the first things we must do is bring set-top data into the marketplace and make that the currency,” Verklin said, speaking last November on a panel at the CTAM Summit.  Detailed audience measurement metrics, in Verklin’s view, are crucial to Canoe’s aims to sell interactive-TV services and deliver ads that are “addressable” to individual set-tops.

and an excerpt from an interview with Canoe’s chief technological exec Arthur Orduna.  Worth thinking about the implications:
And when a viewer does respond, or requests information, what happens?

[Orduna]:  There the local system comes into play, and so does Canoe, actually. Because whatever I click will be collected into a separate aggregation server by the MSO or the system. That information would then be sent to a centralized Canoe aggregation server, because we’d be managing all the information for that particular campaign. And then whatever would need to be done with that data, whether it would need to be presented back to the subscriber, or whether it would be compiled for fulfillment or reporting, that would be Canoe’s responsibility.

Kraft’s Research to Boost Oreo Sales reveals “resurgent desire for indulgent food products”–A multi-media ad campaign designed to stimulate cookie “licking”

This excerpt from an Brandweek article on the 2009 Super Reggie winning ad campaign deserves to be highlighted, so the Federal Trade Commission can do a better job next time it researches the market.  The agencies involved for this campaign included Draftfcb (general and promotional advertising);  Razorfish (digital); Digitas (online media);  MediaVest (media); IMG (experiential); Weber Shandwick (PR).

“…Double Stuf Racing League (DSRL) …The highly stylized marketing and entertainment vehicle, billed as a professional sport…has enjoyed 16 consecutive months of sales growth since the program debuted in late 2007, per the company. That consistent performance was a resounding reversal of the brand’s previous sales declines that year, and it explains why Kraft continues to build on the effort in 2009.

It all began as Kraft’s marketing team and litany of agency partners searched for a new brand experience that would distinguish the creamier Double Stuf Oreo from the original cookie. Research revealed consumers’ resurgent desire for indulgent food products, and collective brainstorming led the team to focus on a familiar aspect of Oreo consumption.

“The spark came as we were thinking about fun new ways to engage consumers with Oreo,” explained John Ghingo, marketing director for Oreo at Kraft Foods, East Hanover, N.J. “Lots of people partake in the rituals of twisting, licking and dunking Oreo cookies in milk. Double Stuf Racing League focuses on the ‘lick’ aspect and takes Oreo to a new place in an unexpected way.”

Thus far, Double Stuf Racing League has pitted two sets of celebrity siblings against each other: NFL star quarterbacks Eli and Peyton Manning and pro tennis champs Venus and Serena Williams. In January 2008, a national TV teaser spot featured a mock press conference by the all-American football heroes declaring their entry into a “second sport.” The ad directed fans to a Web site (whatsthesecondsport.com) where they enter DSLR and participate in games by creating avatars called “Yoobies.” However, the identity of the second sport was kept alive, leaving viewers to chatter about the mystery on fan sites and blogs…

That buzz continues this year. A spring contest is slated for the Sunshine State, with appearances by both the Mannings and the Williamses. So what other famous athletes may join the competition? “Like any league, DSRL is always looking to scout great new talent,” demurred Ghingo.”

Super REGGIE Winner:  Oreo Double Stuf Racing League ‘Licks’ the Competition.   Michael Applebaum. Adweek.  April 6, 2009

DSRL site
NabiscoWorld.com Privacy [data collection] policy

Facebook Connect: “über-targeting” for marketers [Annals of Social Media Marketing]

excerpt from online marketing blog [our bold]:

The Benefits of Facebook Connect

For marketers:

First, it facilitates getting mentioned in Facebook users’s news feeds, which has been the holy grail for marketers because it raises awareness of your business and delivers an implied endorsement.

Second, it provides a treasure trove of user data, allowing über-targeting. You can literally customize the content of your page based on the visitor’s Facebook data, such as his age, gender, location, likes, dislikes, relationship status, even networks, groups, and pages he’s joined – or “fanned.” As a simple example, if you know a visitor is a fan of the band U2, you can highlight your U2-theme stationery, T-shirts, dog bones.

Google and WPP Fund Neuromarketing Research for Digital Ads: Ethical Issues and the Need for Policymaker Scrutiny [with an update on the grants!]

The Wall Street Journal and other publications report that Google and ad giant WPP will announce today the $4.6 million grants it will award for academic research designed to “improve understanding and practices in online marketing, and to better understand the relationship between online and offline media.” Among the research efforts given funds are projects that will “analyze internet users’ surfing habits to determine their thinking styles, such as whether they are most influenced by verbal or visual messages or if they are more holistic or analytical, and how to tailor ads accordingly” and an “analysis into how online ads effect blood flow to different areas of the brain. This research would seek to show the role that emotions play in decision making.”   Academics from MIT, Stanford, and Harvard will receive funds, among others. (And for those of us concerned about the role online advertising and data collection is playing in China–and impacts human rights and environmental sustainability–one of the new grants will fund “how Chinese web users respond to different online-ad formats, such as display and search ads”).

As we will tell the European Commission at the end of the month, at a workshop they have organized to discuss interactive advertising and consumer protection, the evolving role of neuromarketing with online advertising raises a number of troubling concerns–and should trigger a serious policy review.   We have not yet seen a final list of the grantees.  But Google should be funding independent research that will honestly explore the impact and ethics of online marketing.  They should be ensuring that the ethical issues of online marketing–such as the concerns raised by their new behavioural profiling and targeting system–receive a honest scholarly review.

The growing controversy over the role pharmaceutical companies are playing with scholarly research on drugs, we think, has implications here.  We believe all the academic institutions receiving these grants must vet them to ensure they truly address the real impact online ad techniques have on individuals and society.

Update:  Google & WPP made the academic research announcement–eleven grants awarded.  Here are some to ponder–and raise questions:

*  “Targeting Ads to Match Individual Cognitive Styles: A Market Test”; Glen Urban, Professor, MIT Sloan School of Management;

*  “How do consumers determine what is relevant? A psychometric and neuroscientific study of online search and advertising effectiveness”; Antoine Bechara, Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience, Department of Psychology/Brain & Creativity Institute, University of Southern California and Martin Reimann, Fellow, Department of Psychology/Brain & Creativity, University of Southern California;

*“Unpuzzling the Synergy of Display and Search Advertising:Insights from Data Mining of Chinese Internet Users”; Hairong Li, Department of Advertising, Public Relations, and Retailing, Michigan State University and Shuguang Zhao, Media Survey Lab, Tsinghua University;

*”Are Brand Attitudes Contagious? Consumer Response to Organic Search Trends”; Donna L. Hoffman, Professor, A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management, University of California Riverside and Thomas P. Novak, A. Gary Anderson Graduate School of Management, University of California Riverside;

*“Marketing on the Map: Visual Search and Consumer Decision Making”; Nicolas Lurie, Assistant Professor of Marketing, College of Management, Georgia Institute of Technology, College of Management and Sam Ransbotham, Assistant Professor of Information Systems, Carroll School of Management, Boston College.

Big Brands Tracking Your `Tweets’: Online Marketing Tool Can Help Comcast & Others ID “brand allies and foes” [ Annals of Web Analytics]

excerpt:  “Omniture SiteCatalyst now integrates with Twitter to let online marketers monitor and measure tweets. The feature lets marketers import data from Twitter feeds… It tracks preset keywords to monitor who is talking about their brand.

The SiteCatalyst feature also helps identify brand advocates and cynics…

At a recent Omniture Summit, the telecom firm Comcast talked about being able to identify brand allies and foes, according to Matt Langie, senior director of product marketing, Omniture. …

According to Forrester, nearly 5 million people use Twitter, where users send frequent, short updates to followers. Many of the followers look to tie themselves to the brand by joining in on the conversation.

The SiteCatalyst integration with Twitter enables marketers to take advantage of a real-time alert feature to send emails and SMS messages to mobile devices based on pre-determined criteria, such as a spike in mentions of brand-related terms…”

Omniture SiteCatalyst Integrates With Twitter.  Laurie Sullivan.  Online Media Daily.  March 6, 2009

The real digital TV transition: Why TV “Advanced Advertising” [aka Project Canoe] Raises Privacy & Consumer Protection Concerns

The cable and telephone industry have Google envy.  These broadband communications giants recognize that online advertising companies such as Google and Yahoo have created an enormous market for themselves through the delivery of online ads.  Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon and others want to use their Bush Administration-given broadband monopoly status to gain a significant share of this market.  Cable giants are also working together to transform television so it can better compete with online, and target viewers with more precision and in-depth ads.  The goal–for cable, phone and online ad companies–is to eventually provide a seamless system that tracks, profiles and targets us across every “screen,” including TV, PC and mobile.

Comcast is heavily investing for such a viewer/user tracking world.  It has plans, according to the trade publication Multichannel News to create a “gigantic database called “TV Warehouse,” able to store a full year of statistics gathered from digital set-tops in more than 16 million households nationwide…TV Warehouse, envisioned as having a massive 500 Terabytes of storage, would then feed up to a database even broader in scope operated by Canoe Ventures, the advanced-advertising venture formed by Comcast and five other large MSOs.  The idea: to give advertisers an enormous set of actual viewing metrics — showing exactly what millions of cable customers watched and when — as opposed to representative samples.”

Not surprisingly, Comcast’s Brian Roberts has said his company should no longer be viewed as merely a provider of television:  “Over the last few years we have successfully transformed Comcast from a cable company into a new products company that utilizes one infrastructure to deliver a growing number of products.”  Advanced Advertising, which is what the cable industry’s technical consortium known as CableLabs calls it, is one of the major products Comcast and others will soon provide.  According to CableLabs, “Advertising is growing in importance for cable operators. CableLabs is currently supporting activity in four areas designed to create new revenue opportunities around advanced advertising technologies. These areas are digital ad insertion, interactive advertising, reporting, and addressability.”   Cable executives are working with advertising companies to “…agree on a valuation metric. What’s a click worth?”

But the core concern with Advanced Advertising is the tracking of viewers, including the use of internal and outside databases for targeting. Comcast Spotlight, for example, offers marketers access to a broad range of databases for more precise targeting. Acxiom offers cable and other providers a host of database segmentation services, including its Personicx VisionScape. “With PersonicX VisionScape, marketers have at your fingertips real-time access to a wealth of information… that can help them understand more about their customers – what type of products they use, their purchasing behaviors, their channel and media preferences.  The PersonicX household-level segmentation system is built with InfoBase-Xâ„¢ data and places almost every U.S. household into one of 70 distinctive segments and 21 life stage groups based on specific consumer behavior and demographic characteristics.”

Cable’s work to create a more powerful viewer data collection and targeting system has been out of public and policymaker view.  Cable engineers have been working  together to perfect the technology that will allow it to merge “content and subscriber metadata for targeting zones (or, in a unicast environment, for targeting individuals) to bring the right ad to the right consumer at the right time.”

The phone and cable companies, knowing that the 1984 Cable Communications Act contains privacy safeguards for interactive TV ads and aware of the current debate on behavioral targeting, claims that such data collection and targeting will be anonymous and could include an “opt-in.”  We don’t believe any cable or phone consumer is being told the extent of the plans underway to track and target them.  For example, Alcatel’s product for IPTV related advanced advertising explains that:
“To capture the full revenue potential of targeted and interactive advertising, IPTV providers need to ensure that the following critical actions are addressed:

  • Capture and measure — The network must be able to collect “opt-in” subscriber information from a broad range of databases, which advertisers will use to reach specific “targeted” markets. This anonymous data includes usage patterns, subscriptions, demographics, location, presence and preferences — including how, when and where advertising messages are delivered, along with the type of device that is used. In addition, accurate measurement capabilities are needed that can verify audience response and track the effectiveness of ad campaigns…
  • Activate and interact — Finally, this data, combined with the right systems and infrastructure must be able to deliver personalized and interactive ads to the right consumer, at the right time.”

Consumers/subscribers should decide whether such an advanced system can target them at all.  Beyond informed consent (and data security), there need to be clear safeguards.  Targeted ads for financial, health, and products aimed to children and adolescents raise consumer protection issues.  I have real concerns about “ethnic” profiling, given how lucrative advertisers realize the Hispanic and African American markets are.  We believe that the cable industry has to engage the public in a serious debate about the scope and goal of its Project Canoe and advanced advertising initiative.  Congress, the FCC, and the FTC must become more proactive to protect our privacy from this new approach.

PS:  This week’s Multichannel News offers insight into the latest developments.  Here’s an excerpt:  “This year, the largest cable operators in the U.S. plan to have upgraded at least 20 million digital set-tops with code to run standardized interactive-TV applications. That will make it possible for viewers to click a button on their remote to, say, ask an advertiser to e-mail them more information…The industry over the last two years has coalesced around a common technical standard, maintained by CableLabs, referred to as Enhanced Binary Interchange Format, or EBIF (pronounced “EE-biff”)…Comcast, for one, claimed it had deployed EBIF user agents on more than 10 million Motorola set-top boxes by the start of 2009. The operator hopes to complete the rollout to its entire Motorola footprint, about 20 million boxes, by midyear…” [Interactive TV Begins to Bloom.  Todd Spangler.  Multichannel News.  March 3, 2009].

MySpace Exec on its ad hypertargeting system: We have “massive amounts of data” on our users (and an example using Pepsi)

Excerpt.  on MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe presentation.  via paidcontent.org:  “MySpace has 76 million unique online users in the US, and 139 million users worldwide; 40 percent of all Americans based in the US are on mySpace…MySpace has been working on its monetization technology currently used online called Hypertarget, which is five algorithms that basically segments the “massive amounts of data” on mySpace users into “enthusiast buckets.” Currently, they have their audience divided into over 1,000 of these segments, and for example, if Pepsi wants to target alternative music users they can serve them up an ad. Said DeWolfe, “It’s incredibly effective, and increases our yields.” This will be moving onto mobile.”

Facebook, Advertising, Third-Party $Apps, Terms of Service, Data Collection & Privacy

The role that third party developers play accessing user data on social networks such as Facebook has long been a privacy concern for us.  The business practices, including data collection, profiling and targeting that form the basis of social networking “monetization” strategies are hidden from public view.  My CDD and USPIRG, in our various privacy complaints to the FTC, asked the agency to examine this area.  Maybe the new Obama FTC will do so.  But for now, here’s some excerpts from Facebook’s advice “on common business models” to application developers, as well as from its list of “third party developers” involved in social media marketing:

“As you think about building your app on Facebook, we want to help by highlighting some keys ways of thinking about your app as a business… Apps that are meaningful, trustworthy and well designed have real staying – and monetizing – power… we host a Platform with instant access to more than 175 million active users… Once you’ve created a sustainable, engaging social application, there are many different ways to help monetize it… Advertising: We at Facebook have had success serving targeted advertisements to our users based on information we know about them. By leveraging the data we give you access to (as detailed in our Developer Terms of Service) and data users share with you directly as a part of your application experience, you can serve highly relevant ads… Virtual Credits / Virtual Goods:… instead of accepting payments directly from users for subscriptions or virtual goods, some applications instead allow users to complete affiliate offers by filling out surveys or agreeing to try new products. There are a number of providers who consolidate these types of offers…
Third Party Providers to Help You Monetize:
Advertising:
AdParlor:  “Over 500 Million users worldwide are on a social networking site. These users are comfortable sharing their age, gender, and location, and can be reached through targeted advertising.”…
Shopitmedia: “you can target based on:
1. Location
2. Gender
3. Age
4. Application Category”…
Affiliate marketing…
Analytics…

Payments