Tag: IPG-Emerging-Media-Lab

YouTube rentals: The new Netflix?

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YouTube rentals: The new Netflix? (iStock and YouTube)If you were looking to get rich off that adorable video of your baby dancing to Rihanna’s “Rude Boy,” today might be your lucky day.  This week, YouTube quietly rolled out a YouTube Rentals beta program open to any user looking to monetize their content.  All you do is upload your video, choose a few settings, wait for YouTube staff approval, and then sit back and watch the money roll in.

Or not.  Conventional wisdom dictates that consumers aren’t likely to pay for something they’re used to getting for free.   In fact, they can get down right annoyed and angry about.  On the other hand, try telling that to “The Simpsons” and “Sex and The City” who made a killing at the theatrical box office on content people were used to getting pro bono.  Continue reading “YouTube rentals: The new Netflix?”

EA selects single player for in-game ads

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EA selects single player for in-game ad formats (EA)The news that EA is dropping third parties from selling into the company’s dynamic in-game ad inventory is a pretty interesting development. At first blush, it looks like a move to increase margins and control pricing of the inventory. The more I think about the announcement, though, the more I hope the rabbit hole goes deeper.

When publishers of any sort integrate a third-party ad-serving solution, it essentially puts the sales teams and the creative teams at odds. Sales teams want to dream up incredible, never-done-before done campaigns with brands. A third-party solution acts as a bottleneck, shattering many of those dreams. Creatives look at those third-party solutions as invading their space, and find viewing the ads as a necessary evil.

When the ad-serving technology sits with product teams that work in parallel with the core product teams, this changes in a significant way. Suddenly the core product makes concessions to organically integrate with the ad products coming down the pipe, and then the sales teams are able to dream a bit bigger, doing some very neat stuff. I really hope this intention played a part in EA’s decision, in addition to the desire to control pricing and maximize profits. Read full article on Mediapost.

Branding in a new era of journalism

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Branding in a new era of journalism (iStock) When Joel McHale’s character Jeff Winger on the NBC show Community spouts some dubious statistics in this week’s episode, he is promptly mocked by a friend who quips, “I think some of this research may have been done on Wikipedia.”  The user-generated encyclopedia gets its share of jabs from journalists, professors, and comedy writers alike, but that doesn’t stop 365 million unique visitors from happily trusting it as an information source every month.

This and other related topics were the subject of a SXSW Interactive panel last week titled “Process Journalism: Getting It First, While Getting it Right.”  Several panelists, including writers for the New York Times and SISeattle.com discussed a new generation of journalism in which sites like Twitter and YouTube have become essential to breaking news stories.

Through a variety of case studies including stories about Steve Jobs’ health and a Seattle murder, the speakers illustrated a new triple-threat of resources that professional journalists now tap: Technology, Social Networks, and Citizen journalists.  Continue reading “Branding in a new era of journalism”

Prophesee: Engaging consumers online

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PropheSee: New ways to engage consumers online After nearly three years managing the social media and healthcare practices at the Lab, Raquel Krouse recently joined the Initiative Media team as SVP, Director for Prophesee social solutions, the agency’s social media unit. We sat down to talk about her new role, and how Prophesee aims to give brands better ways to listen and engage consumers online.

Q: You’ve done exciting work in social media over the past few years; how does Prophesee fit into the social media narrative?

A: When talking about developing a social media strategy, I’ve always stressed listening as an essential first step.  But it’s really about active listening. Prophesee not only provides solutions to monitor online chatter, but also provides the services to help brands understand and effectively act upon online buzz.

Q: What’s different about Prophesee, and why now? Continue reading “Prophesee: Engaging consumers online”

Confessions of an aging technojunkie

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Confessions of an aging technophile (iStock)Ok, I admit it. I love new technology. I love getting new devices, figuring out how they work, learning what they can do for me. But increasingly, I find integrating new technology into my life harder and harder.

I need a new PC for my home office, but I keep putting it off because it will be such a pain to reinstall software, update drivers, connect to my network. I want to switch to a new carrier for my portable phone, but the idea of actually going to the carrier store to switch service irritates me. And my multi that drives my home theater recently died – the thought of buying and reprogramming a new one seems ridiculously complicated, even though I have done it before.

In short, the lure of new technology and the realities of life integration seem increasingly more difficult the older I get. And it seems I am not alone. Continue reading “Confessions of an aging technojunkie”

“TV of Tomorrow” gains traction

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TV of tomorrow fast approaching (iStock) Last week Tracy Swedlow’s  annual “TV of Tomorrow” Conference was held in San Francisco where the “who’s who” of Interactive television gathered to discuss the future of television from broadcast to broadband including tru2way and TV Anywhere.

In past years’ conferences, you would have found the the few, the proud, the clinically-depressed-die-hards of advanced television platforms, geekgirls like myself , who have been trying for years to advance the cause of TV with social features, commerce solutions and true targeting capabilities.  And in the past, the legacy systems of the US cable infrastructure, the limitations of satellite’s two-way capabilities and the lack of scale in broadband hindered advancement in the space.  But this year, the conference came into its own as the industry showed market growth in a number of ongoing initiatives.   There is movement happening, money being spent and real players involved in the marketplace.

To set the stage for what’s happening in the interactive video space, here are some relevant statistics:

57% of Americans use their TV and PC simultaneously at least 1x a month (Nielsen)
20% of all tv viewers are simultaneously on their pc or mobile device (MRG)
78% of Teens and Tweens are online while watching tv and 66% are sending text messages while watching tv (ypulse/Pangea)

Of all the solutions bubbling up, here are a few that marketers can immediately take advantage of to leverage the power of video to accomplish a number of marketing goals:  Continue reading ““TV of Tomorrow” gains traction”

8 mobile marketing questions answered

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Smartphones eliminate "mobile" vs "online" divide (iStock) From Ad Age’s Digital Marketing Guide to Mobile

I haven’t been doing any mobile marketing so far. How hard will it be to catch up?

The mobile landscape is at a tipping point right now, switching from a very old approach to an edgy new one. The difference between newer smartphones vs. feature (or non-smart) phones, or even older smartphones, is dramatic. Consumer behavior is transitioning from mostly using the phone for voice and text communication to using it as a secondary or even primary computing device. For this subset of wireless subscribers, their pocket-size computer is used for browsing the web, watching videos, reading e-mails, listening to personalized radio stations, downloading eBooks — heck, even filing taxes.

Just as the behaviors on the devices are vastly different, the marketing tactics and strategies are night and day between feature phones and newer smartphones. Where promotions and light engagement were the status quo for older phones, the cutting edge is all about features and utility. In most cases, these consumers care most about how useful it will be to engage, rather than just how entertaining. Continue reading “8 mobile marketing questions answered”

Motion-based marketing moves forward

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Moving forward with motion-based marketing (iStock)Humanity has come to an intriguing crossroads. Our technology is evolving faster than ever, and yet the human experience hasn’t changed much since the golden age of Rome. We stand on the verge of a collision between these two worlds as our technology becomes increasingly integrated with the innate methods humans use to interact with the world. It’s a trend of “engaging the primal.”

Interface technology is an interesting field right now. It takes a long time to move forward, but when it does, the world moves along with it. For a time, we interacted with technology and computers through punch cards that indicated what we wanted done. Eventually, we re-purposed the legacy interface of a typewriter to arrive at the keyboard, expanding the accessibility of computers to most households. Then in 1963, the mouse was invented and with it computers eventually became centered around graphical interactions, no longer requiring arcane command line input.  Today the hot new interface technology revolves around kinetics. Multi-touch screens, image and gesture recognition, internal gyroscopes — as these technologies advance, devices like the Wii and the iPhone are quickly moving from outliers to standards.
Continue reading “Motion-based marketing moves forward”

2010 Super Bowl search marketing scorecard

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(Reprise Media)This morning, Reprise Media released the 6th annual Search Marketing Scorecard on the Super Bowl, which ranks Super Bowl advertisers based on the level of integration between their television commercials and presence in search and social media –measuring how prepared each brand was to capture the demand created by their Super Bowl advertising investment. The Search Marketing Scorecard is the longest-running study of its kind.

The audience for this year’s Super Bowl was primed and ready for integrated campaigns. According to a recent comScore study, 1/3 of the 90 million people planning to watch the Super Bowl expected to log on to their computers during the game. Furthermore, One out of every ten viewers (or nearly 9 million people) were going to use their computers specifically to seek out advertiser websites. That sounds like an audience that’s not only interested in the ads, but interested in having real interactions with brands, which is what our study is all about.

So how did this year’s advertisers do?  Read full article here.

Super Bowl ROI, more social than ever

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Super Bowl more social than ever (Flickr via Modenadude)For years, the Super Bowl has become the essence of TV advertising – the one day of the year that we celebrate commercials. Conversations around the ads drive as much interest as the game itself. Increasingly some of the most exciting content is happening in social spaces where interest swells, buzz surges and opinions proliferate. There’s even an opportunity for buzz around network rejected ads. This week, GoDaddy invited consumers to view their banned ad on their site, while the attention and reach for the rejected ad for the gay dating site Mancrunch.com may garner even more attention than if it had aired (without the hefty three million dollar price tag).

Although some large brands such as Pepsi have opted to skip Super Bowl ads in favor on online campaigns this year–a move which has probably earned Pepsi as much or more attention than if they had participated–others have opted to best take advantage of the surge in online consumer interest in their ads. Social media users can share, forward, discuss, critique, rate and review the ads at live chats, twitter games, You Tube’s Ad Blitz, USA Today’s Ad Meter, and many other sites. Continue reading “Super Bowl ROI, more social than ever”