smays.com

When companies control their media

This video was brought to my attention because the "reporter" is a former Learfield intern, Tyne Morgan. Some of you might remember Tyne from a little speed-texting video I posted a while back.

Big companies like Monsanto have always had the wherewithal to produce videos like this one. But then what? You buy time from a bunch of TV stations to air them? Pretty darned expensive.

Today? You create your own YouTube channel and hire someone like Tyne and you're off and running. You can bet Monsanto has one bad mamma jamma of a database/mailing list that can be sliced and diced to target exactly the people that might want to see this.

So, when companies can control their media/message from A to Z... what is the role of what we used to call "the media?" [via Journamarketing]

MacBook product placement in top TV shows

In the season premier of The Office, Pam heads off to art school with what appears to be a new MacBook. Back in Scranton, Jim has a MacBook Pro so the two love birds can chat. Of course, Michael has to get in on the fun ("Put me down, Michael. Take me back to Jim.")

Pretty good product placement. But no better than what we saw in the season premier of HBO's Entourage (I would have sworn I posted on this but can't find it), when Johnny Drama carried on an LA/Paris relationship via his MacBook Pro.

I'm sure PC users assume this is just Hollywood horse shit but it really is that easy to video chat on the Mac.

We're not talking about a bottle of Budweiser on the kitchen table. In both instances, the Mac's were written prominently into the story line. Would love to know how much Apple paid for these two placements? [via Cult of Mac]

Cloverfield-esqe anti-smoking PSA

The Iowa Department of Public Health is using a "spooky" video -- which looks a bit like the movie "Cloverfield" -- as part of a new anti-smoking campaign designed to appeal to teenagers.

The premise is that everybody in the eastern Iowa town of Springville disappears. Springville population = 1200. Number of people that die each day from tobacco use = 1200.  The message of the campaign is that a town of the size of Springville disappears everyday because of tobacco use." [Radio Iowa]

I wanna see the rejects

PR Newswire: The University of Oklahoma and Sooner Sports Properties recently partnered with mobile sports fan network FanChatter to provide Scoreboard Photo Sharing at every Sooner home football game this season (sponsored by McDonald's.)

The McDonald's Sooner Football I'm Lovin' It feature invites fans to show how much they're "lovin'" the Sooners during the game by texting or emailing photos from their phone to a custom address. Every fan that sends a photo receives an instant text message reply thanking them for their submission and alerting them to special deals on McDonald's menu items.

Twins Scoreboard Photo Sharing powered by FanChatter Stadium from FanChatter on Vimeo.

Select photos are then displayed on the videoboard before the start of the 4th quarter and all approved photos are forwarded to a McDonald's branded gallery website where they can be seen and shared with friends. The feature's reply message and branded gallery components offer added messaging platforms to advertisers while also enhancing the fans' experience between games.

I don't think I blogged it but I floated this idea a couple of years ago. Disclosure: Learfield --the company I work for-- has the marketing rights for the Sooners.

Not that there's anything wrong Vista

I think Jerry Seinfeld is damned funny. And smart. He's probably a good choice for Microsoft's $300 million ad campaign ("Windows, Not Walls") for Vista. Jerry is reportedly getting $10 million for the gig. If they let him write the ads, they might pull it off. I don't have to use Vista (Praise be to Allah!) but I don't hear good things about it.

I bring this up because I just checked out the latest series of Get A Mac ads. Throne, Off the Air and Pizza Box. Snap!

Here's something I've wondered... you've got Mac fan boys like me posting their love for all things Apple. Are there bloggers out there singing the praises of Vista? Drop a link in the comments.

Is this the advertising of the future?

Customers blogging their satisfaction. But there's a catch. You have to have a really good product or service. You have to exceed the customers expectations. You can't just shout it from TV spots. You have to make it true. And then others will shout it for you.

Ad budgets to be reduced

MEDIAWEEK: "It's going to be a bumpy six months for advertising, according to results from a new survey of advertisers released Thursday (Aug. 21) by the Association of National Advertisers.

More than half of the 100 advertisers (53 percent) surveyed expect their ad budgets to be reduced in the next six months because of the tough economic climate."

The battle for local

Lost Remote's Don Day looks at the strengths and weaknesses of local media at the war for local dollars gets hotter. Don't miss the comments. Good stuff.

Interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt

Last week Google CEO Eric Schmidt was interviewed by CNBC's Jim Cramer (Mad Money). Terry Heaton provides an insightful summary of special interest to local media companies:

"He said the company gives up billions in revenue by keeping ads off the home page. Why? Because it would upset users. “We prioritize the end user over the advertiser,” he told Cramer. This simple statement — if truly adopted by media companies — would revolutionize all of online media. We’d have a race to see who could better serve the wants and needs of the people formerly known as the audience, and that would be a refreshing change from words like capture, drive, and my favorite, monetize.

Google doesn’t provide any guidance whatsoever to stock analysts, and Schmidt’s answer, again, is profoundly simple when he says it would “get in the way” of running the business, adding, “If we started giving quarterly guidance, all of a sudden the whole company would start focusing on the quarter rather than trying to change the world.”

On the company’s heretofore unsuccessful attempts to make money from YouTube, Schmidt said it didn’t matter, at least not right now. He said they make plenty of money already, because YouTube places users in the stream of Google’s other businesses, and that cannot be overlooked. “I’d be worried if people weren’t using to YouTube,” he told Cramer. “Since it’s an enormous success globally, we know we will eventually benefit from it.”

If you're in the advertising business, you should watch this interview. (Part one, part two, part three)

What are people saying about your product?

The folks Kraft Foods wanted to know what people thought of Vegemite (something they put on toast in Australia). So they hired IBM who has a little program called CoBRA (Corporate and Brand Reputation Analysis) to listen to on-line consumer conversations in blogs, boards and news feeds.

CoBRA scanned 1.5 billion posts in 38 different languages, and came up with 479,206 mentions of Vegemite. Outranking other giants like Coca Cola, Nike, Toyota, Sony and Starbucks when it came to people searching and commenting on their favourite product online.

There's more on the story here. I only mention this because all those big brands mentioned above spend a butt-load of money marketing and advertising. I'm guessing Kraft doesn't do so much for Vegemite.

This means something but I'm not sure what.

We've come a long way from the banner ad

A tip of the fez to The Dulle Man for pointing us to this clever bit of marketing. It's probably funnier if you speak Portuguese, but it works if you don't.

Put your first name in the first field and your last name in the second field... then click on "Vizualizar" link, bottom/left. And if you're quick enough, you can grab a frame like this.

What is it with the Apple logo on TV?

"Sex and the City's" Miranda, Cynthia Nixon, sat down with Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday night to promote her blockbuster chick flick. Jimmy brought out his laptop partway through the interview for an online multiple choice quiz, which decides which of the four main SATC characters the taker is most like."

I started noticing this after I turned in to a Mac fanboy. What's the big deal about masking the Apple logo? I guess they'd mask any recognizable brand logo. The difference is how distinctive the MacBook is. But maybe that's true only of Mac fans. To everyone else, it's just a laptop.

So here's today's assignment: Name another product that is equally recognizable (without seeing the brand logo). Begin.

Minority Report Billboards

"Billboards are, for the most part, still a relic of old-world media, and the best guesses about viewership numbers come from foot traffic counts or highway reports, neither of which guarantees that the people passing by were really looking at the billboard, or that they were the ones sought out.

Now, some entrepreneurs have introduced technology to solve that problem. They are equipping billboards with tiny cameras that gather details about passers-by — their gender, approximate age and how long they looked at the billboard. These details are transmitted to a central database.

Behind the technology are small start-ups that say they are not storing actual images of the passers-by, so privacy should not be a concern. The cameras, they say, use software to determine that a person is standing in front of a billboard, then analyze facial features (like cheekbone height and the distance between the nose and the chin) to judge the person’s gender and age. So far the companies are not using race as a parameter, but they say that they can and will soon.

The goal, these companies say, is to tailor a digital display to the person standing in front of it — to show one advertisement to a middle-aged white woman, for example, and a different one to a teenage Asian boy." [New York Times]

New media can't get here soon enough

Proto-blogger Dave Winer thinks the real problem revealed by Scott McClellan's new tell-all book is that the press was complicit in beating the Iraq war drum:

"But corporate-owned media isn't interested in helping us make decisions as a country, they're only interested in ad revenue. That's why it's so important that we're creating new media that isn't so conflicted, and why the question of whether bloggers run ads or not is far from a trivial issue."

When it comes to national media, there really are not that many outlets that need to be manipulated. Four TV networks; maybe that many cable news channels; a handful of newspapers with national reach. If you can juke them, you've got a lot of the country juked.

The sooner their influence is diminished, the better. There will no longer be even the illusion of "national media" and people will have to work (a little) at being informed. Sure, the willfully clueless will still head for blogs and news sites that confirm their view. But the rest of us will stop trusting (if we haven't already) news organizations that are child's play for political spin-miesters.

The results business

Mark Ramsey points to a survey of marketing professionals that shows growing pressure on accountability:

"86% of marketers say pressure has increased on them to account for results; no one said that the pressure has decreased. Moreover, 68% of organizations are measuring the quantifiable contribution of marketing to the bottom line.

Message to radio: You're no longer in the advertising business. You're in the results business. So which are you selling, advertising or results?"

I feel like I should have something to say about this... but I don't know what it would be.

"Advertising is a tax you pay for being unremarkable."

This phrase was coined in 2007 by Geek Squad founder Robert Stephens. I found it in a story on the Salt Lake Tribune website. The story is about viral video campaigns, specifically, the "Will It Blend" series by Blendtec.

If this is true, how can those of us who sell advertising use this insight to help our customers?

Fallout shelter radio ads

I remember well the back-yard fallout shelter craze (mania?). The family that lived behind us had one. It was clearly large enough for just one family but it was considered uncool to talk about who would live and who would die. And we lived in the landing approach path to the Strategic Air Command base in Blytheville, AR. Generally considered a prime target for a Russki ICBM.

The nice folks at DinosaurGardens.com have posted some creative radio spots for Survive-All Fallout Shelters. ("Civil defense approved, FHA approved, no money down, five years to pay!") [via Boing Boing]

But wouldn't that mean I'm too stupid to drive?

Tonight's mail included a "letter" addressed to Perry S. Mays (Nobody uses my full name). There was no return address. Inside was what appeared to be a newspaper clipping tagged with a yellow Post-It note which read: "Perry: Check this out! (signed) J"

Of course the newspaper "story" is bullshit, although there is nothing in the copy that would clue the clueless on this point.

I wish I could give the dealer --Reagan Hyundai in Jefferson City-- the benefit of the doubt. They weren't trying to snooker their way into unsuspecting homes... it was just a little joke. April Fools Day a week or so early. Gotcha!

Maybe.

But if this shit works, it means there's some kind of creepy reverse Darwinism at work. In time, only the mentally impaired will be lured onto the lot.

Everything about this is designed to trick someone into reading about about your sale. To fool them. One would almost think the public doesn't want to hear from you. But why would that be?

Sharpen your writing skills with "Stopwatch Challenge"

Dan Rieck suggest we can sharpen our copywriting skills with what he calls the "Stopwatch Challenge." The exercise is basically writing a radio spot that can be spoken aloud in exactly 60 seconds.

Brings back fond memories of my radio days. For a dozen years, about half of my 10 hour days were spent on the air and the other half writing and producing radio commercials. Let's see... we'll call it 50 spots a week. 200 spots a  month. 2,400 spots a year. Let's round it down to 28,000 commercials.

We had to knock 'em out fast and get 'em on the air. And the client always gave you more stuff that you could fit in 30 or 60 seconds. So part of the challenge was boiling it down.

Sixty seconds is about 16 lines. But you have to spell out numbers (one-eight-hundred-five-five-five-sixty-four-hundred).

I've never considered myself a great writer. But writing radio spots was pretty good training for blogging. Or maybe any kind of writing. Fewer words always better than more words.

I often send emails with nothing but "see subject line" in the body. I try to put it all in the subject line. Try it on your next email.

And, yes, I know this post is longer than sixty seconds.

Radio owners waiting out "this Internet thing"

Gordon Borrell, writing in Inside Radio:

"As an advertising medium, the Internet is already larger than radio. It will approach $34 billion this year and is on a trajectory to overtake newspaper advertising within five years. In virtually all markets, the largest local Web site (typically run by a newspaper company) is now grossing more ad revenue than the largest radio station in that market. In some markets, the largest site is grossing more than the largest cluster of stations."

"Your radio reps have a bounty on their heads. We survey more than 3,000 local Web sites every year about their revenues, expenses, number of salespeople and other revenue-related topics. The ones with the greatest market share and revenue have an interesting characteristic in common: a star-performing “former radio rep” on the sales staff. The word has spread that radio salespeople know how to sell the Internet, and newspaper and TV Web site managers have been recruiting them left and right. Radio reps know how to cold-call, how to generate new business, and how to sell reach and frequency. That’s a perfect match for Internet sales."

FedEx Cup TV Ad

Given that the FedEx Cup commercial has been viewed more than 80,000 times in the last few weeks, you could make the case that it's not just a TV spot. It got emailed around our office yesterday morning.

The latest version of Photo Booth was supposed to make it easy to put a still image or video behind you when doing an iChat video conference. I've had mixed results, even using the green screen backdrop I set up in the basement. But Apple will get this right eventually and it will be very useful, as seen in the FedEx spot.

What you know, not what you sell

Sales trainer Chris Lytel points to a Wall Street Journal interview with Ram Charan, a business professor turned consultant and author (What the Customer Wants You to Know).

“It has become very hard to differentiate yourself in the eyes of the customer, for business to business sales. So salespeople should not sell the product anymore. They should find out what the customer needs, which will be a combination of products and services and thought leadership.”

“In the old game, one person could do the selling. In the new game, you need a team from your company. The reason you need a team is the solution you’re going to create is going to come form different parts of your company. That means salespeople have to be good leaders, to lead their team, and also persuade the customer team. Because customers also buy in teams.”

Thought leadership. Interesting concept. Increasingly, our "network radio" sales reps are finding that their clients want more than 30 second spots. I suppose you could say they always wanted more than spots... they wanted the sales or mind-share those "spots" could bring.

These days, it's rare that the prospect doesn't bring up the subject of the web as part of their marketing strategy. Knowing a little something about blogging and podcasting has been very useful.

Brilliant Apple Leopard ad on NY Times site

A really clever ad for Apple Leopard appeared on the NYT homepage. It was gone by the time I heard about it but found this screen-shot on digg. What a brilliant way to extend the highly recognizable and effective "Get a Mac" TV spots. Makes the typical web page ad look pretty lame.

"Instead of shouting the message, hide it."

Will we still get carpet bombed by mindless 30 second commercials in the future? (And by future I mean a couple of weeks from now.) Seems unlikely, but how will savvy marketers reach --and more importantly-- engage us? How do you "reach people who are so media-saturated they block all attempts to get through."

Perhaps with alternate reality games (ARG's). That's the subject of a fascinating article by Frank Rose in this month's Wired Magazine (Issue 16.01).

"The initial clue was so subtle that for nearly two days nobody noticed it. On February 10, 2007, the first night of Nine Inch Nails' European tour, T-shirts went on sale at a 19th-century Lisbon concert hall with what looked to be a printing error: Random letters in the tour schedule on the back seemed slightly boldfaced. Then a 27-year-old Lisbon photographer named Nuno Foros realized that, strung together, the boldface letters spelled "i am trying to believe." Foros posted a photo of his T-shirt on the Spiral, the Nine Inch Nails fan forum. People started typing "iamtryingtobelieve.com" into their Web browsers. That led them to a site denouncing something called Parepin, a drug apparently introduced into the US water supply. Ostensibly, Parepin was an antidote to bioterror agents, but in reality, the page declared, it was part of a government plot to confuse and sedate citizens. Email sent to the site's contact link generated a cryptic auto-response: "I'm drinking the water. So should you." Online, fans worldwide debated what this had to do with Nine Inch Nails. A setup for the next album? Some kind of interactive game? Or what?"

I'm not a gamer. At all. But I love shit like this. Reminds me of the viral video snippets in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition. The Wired article is well worth the read.

Advertiser Optimism by Medium

From Terry Heaton's PoMo Blog:

"Advertiser Perceptions latest survey of 2,047 ad executives (published twice yearly) — as published by Online Media Daily — reveals growing pessimism among ad buyers about traditional forms of advertising. I view this study as significant, because it speaks directly with people who are making decisions about spending money."

Only newspapers face a smaller increase and larger decrease than radio? [Emphasis/red from original post]

1,000 $100 advertisers

Buzz Machine: "Newspapers are losing their own core market because they didn’t understand the scale of the internet. They still thought mass when they should have realized that small is the new big. That is, online, newspapers still threw their lot in with the big advertisers who had been the only ones who could afford their mass products. They didn’t see the mass of potential spending in a new population of small, local advertisers who never could afford to advertise in newspapers but who now could afford to buy targeted, efficient, inexpensive ads online."

"Even the online sales teams at newspaper companies didn’t how now to sell small; they were — as I once put it in a meeting — putting all their effort into saving the old $100,000 advertiser and saw getting 1,000 $100 advertisers as a distraction. The new-media divisions had already become big and old."

Jeff Jarvis goes on to offer suggestions on how newspapers can generate new, local dollars online:

"Start a new company that makes small, local advertising its sole focus. That means they need to set up automated systems to accept and place highly targeted local ads and directories. That means they need to come up with new means of selling without on-the-street sales staffs: outbound phone sales, direct response, even local sales network (instead of citizen journalists, citizen sales people), making aggressive use of the promotional power of the newspaper while you still have it. That means they need to have lots of targeted local content without large editorial staffs."

Most sales organizations with which I am familiar are just not wired for this. The math just doesn't work. It will be interesting to see which traditional media companies are able to make their sales machine work in a New Online World.

New Get A Mac ads

Three new TV spots from Apple. Boxer, Podium and PR Lady. I share these as examples of creative TV spots. Vista doesn't need me piling on.  And I just bought a copy of XP to load on Barb's new MacBook (a Christmas present she knows she's getting.) Not sure what will happen (vis a vis Vista) here at work, but there's an outside chance I might never have to suffer the Vista Tribulation.

IBM Report: "The End of Advertising as We Know It"

Podcasting News points to a report compiled by IBM with the scary title: "The End of Advertising as We Know It." I'm not sure what IBM knows about the state of advertising but they surveyed more than 2,400 consumers and 89 ad execs globally.

The report from Big Blue forecasts "greater disruption for the advertising industry in the next five years than occurred in the previous 50."

When I read stuff like this, I ask the men and women in our company (who sell a LOT of advertising) if they get a similar read and the answer is always, "Nope, everything is A-OK." No changes on the horizon. Everything is hunky-dory.

Well, five years isn't that long. We shall see what we shall see.

PS: Here's one more graph from the report summary:

More than half of ad professionals polled by IBM expect that in the next five years open advertising exchanges (currently led by companies like Google, Yahoo, AOL) will take 30 percent of current revenues now commanded by traditional broadcasters and media. Nearly half of the advertising survey respondents anticipate a significant (greater than 10%) revenue shift away from the 30-second spot within the next five years, and almost 10 percent of respondents thought there would be a dramatic (greater than 25 percent) shift. Two-thirds of advertising experts surveyed by IBM expect 20 percent of advertising revenue to move from impression-based to impact-based formats within three years.

More ads flowing to blogs?

The Society for New Communications Research is a think tank on new media. They recently asked a couple of hundred advertising agencies about their plans to advertise and market in "conversational media" (blogs and podcasts and such). Among the findings:

"In the next five years, a majority of advertising and marketing professionals expect to spend more money on so-called conversational media--or online media that encompasses things like blogs and podcasts--than on advertising through traditional media such as newspapers or magazines.

Today, a majority of these agencies said that they spend about 2.5 percent of their total budgets on conversational media, but by 2012, they plan to tip that percentage to more than they spend on traditional media."

From a post by Stefanie Olsen over at the C|Net Blog (Thanks to Kevin O'Keefe at LexBlog for the pointer.)

As one who has made his living from "radio spots" for 30+ years, this is hard to imagine. But five years isn't that long. I guess we'll see.

The Office writers mock studios from picket line

As the writers' strike enters day three, some writers and producers are taking to the video sharing site YouTube to express their frustrations. A YouTube channel created by the Writers Guild of America, West posted a video titled "The Office is Closed" yesterday, featuring the off-camera writers and on-camera stars of the NBC comedy "The Office.

I don't pretend to understand the subtleties and issues surrounding the writers strike, but I do know that I'd be happy to pay $2 an episode (or $5) to get The Office online. This is just one more whitecap in the sea change going on in media. The web has shifted (IMHO) the power to the creators, away from the suits.

Blogs most trusted form of web advertising

"Consumer-generated content is by far a more trusted form of advertising worldwide than search engine ads, banner ads, or text ads, according to Nielsen, and is trusted almost as much as physical word-of-mouth. 66 percent of North Americans trust consumer-generated media, such as blogs. Only higher trust ranking was 'other consumer recommendations,' which earned 78 percent of respondents' trust." [WebProNews via LexBlog]

Recent example: George's review of the new Sony HRD-CX7 digital video camera. I happen to know that George knows a LOT about cameras, hardware and software. If he likes this camera enough to buy and recommend it, that's all I need to know.

Buy $1,000 in radio spots, get $2,000 back

TechCrunch wonders if Google's radio ad network --Google Audio-- is in trouble:

"Google is offering $2,000 to any advertiser who spends $1,000 on a Google Audio ad campaign. The $2,000 comes in the form of a credit on future ad campaigns, but part of it still comes out of Google’s pocket since it needs to pay the radio stations who will run the ads. It amounts to a “buy one, get two free” offer and is good through the end of the year.

If (Google) truly has a better way of buying and selling radio ads, advertisers and radio stations will quickly figure that out on their own. It is not a good sign when Google has to resort to paying customers to try out a new product."

Update 10/15/07: This from a reader (who prefers to remain anonymous) who works at a radio station that runs Google Audio ads:

"This week we ran on average 18 :60's a day for Google. They just fill in avails that are on our schedule, so many of them are in the evening between 6p-11p. Some hours may have a Google Ad in each stop set.

I don't see the checks but I've heard they range from $500-$2,000 a month. We do have the ability to block out any hours or programming we don't want their stuff in.

To me it would just seem to be up to the station owner/company is the money worth tying up the time with these filler type ads.  I've yet to hear an ad I thought specifically targets to our region or even state... and no real big name company's like Ford, GM, McDonald's, JC Penney, Target or anything."

The story behind the amazing Nike Freestyle ad

A few posts back I pointed you to a terrific segment on professional poker players, produced by This American Life. I don't think I mentioned that the first segment in that show was just as good.

Joel Lovell visits 19-year-old Luis Da Silva, one of the stars of a popular series of Nike commercials featuring professional and amateur basketball players doing dribbling tricks. You can watch the amazing Nike ad on YouTube (it's been viewed more than one million times). While you're there, check out the parody spot... and the soccer version.

Blinks ad adlets

From latimes.com: "Miniature radio ads, spanning just a few seconds in length, are a hit in Hollywood, says market leader Clear Channel Communications Inc., which launched the spots known as blinks and adlets last year.

Homer Simpson's unmistakable "D'oh!" or "Woohoo!" followed by the familiar tagline "Tonight on Fox!" for example, has been a popular two-second ad -- known as a blink -- for Fox Broadcasting.

Unlike longer ads, which run during minutes-long commercial breaks, the blinks and adlets are slipped in between songs.

Clear Channel declined to disclose pricing, but one ad executive said five-second adlets typically fetch as much as 20% of 60-second ads, which cost about $800 in major markets, and two-second blinks cost 10%." [Thanks, Roger]

Banner Blindness

Jakob Nielsen shares results of new eyetracking studies which confirm --"for the umpteenth time"-- that banner blindness is real:

"Users almost never look at anything that looks like an advertisement, whether or not it's actually an ad. On hundreds of pages, users didn't fixate on ads. Scanning is more common than reading, but users will sometimes dig into an article if they really care about it."

Buying blog love

A co-worker dropped off a copy of a statement he received for some batteries he recently purchased (from Tenergy Corporation/All-Battery.com). At the bottom of the statement:

We pay $30 for your professional reviews and opinions.

Please review the products listed on all-battery.com

• The review must be more than 400 words and shall be objective and must be posted on any well known forum or website
• Constructive comments are always welcome
• Must copy your review to "Product Reviews" section at http://forums.all-battery.com
• Upon approving your review, we will send a $30 Gift certificat to you thru Email or PM

I've been reading about this kind of paid review but this is the first pitch I've seen. This raises so many interesting (to me) question:

• Will they "approve" my review if I say something negative about their product or company?
• What do they mean by "constructive comments?"
• Will I get my gift certificate if I write nice things but disclose to my readers that I'm getting paid?
• How many of their customers have blogs and websites? How many post to forums?

This just doesn't smell right to me. If I discovered that a blogger was getting paid for reviews, I'd have trouble trusting anything else he/she wrote. If the company's motives are pure, why not clearly state that the offer applies to any well-intentioned, objective review. And if someone has something critical to say, wouldn't that be worth a $30 certificate?

There's a way to do this, of course. If someone in the Casio (digital camera) marketing department noticed that I use/like/blog about their cameras, they could send me a new model and ask me to try it out and blog my impressions. Good or bad. They won't have to give me the camera, because if it's good, I'll probably buy it. AND write nice things about the product.

Mark Ramsey: "You're not in the 'radio' business anymore

Mr. Ramsey says the advertising industry is about to redefine radio's "category." According to a report by MediaVest, radio is now "audio":

"In a new report being circulated to clients, MediaVest has adopted the position that terrestrial broadcast radio should no longer be looked at as a discrete medium in communications plans, but as part of a greater array of audio media--including satellite, online, mobile and a variety of personal media device technologies, such as iPods, other MP3 players, and even television, which increasingly is being used as an audio-only medium."

"...radio should no longer be looked at as a discrete medium, but as part of a greater array of audio media."

Ouch.

I agree with Mr. Ramsey that a) this has been coming for a bit and b) it is an important shift that too many "broadcasters" still don't get. I encourage you to read the full post.

Internet radio to outstrip HD radio

eMarketer: "Internet radio will generate ad revenues of $19.7 billion in 2020, equal to those of terrestrial radio in 2006, according to a Bridge Ratings press release issued in August 2007. Bridge Ratings made the projections as part of a study comparing Internet radio adoption with HD radio. Bridge Ratings surveyed consumers ages 12 and older in June and July 2007."

"These aggressive forecasts for Internet radio could be threatened by the ongoing dispute between record companies and Internet broadcasters over performance royalties to labels and artists for music streamed over the Web."

"Bridge Ratings estimates that Internet radio will have 180 million listeners by 2020. Terrestrial radio will have 250 million listeners. But HD will have less than 10 million." [via RAIN]

Ads that sell because they're sold

Seth explains the different kinds of advertising:

"The first kind is the rational kind. Yellow Page ads, direct mail and Google AdWords fit into this category. This is advertising that works, if 'works' is defined as, "pay $3 and make $4." With measurable direct advertising, you can count on profit-minded small organizations to give it a try (small buys) and if it obviously makes money, to buy some more.

The second kind of advertising is the glamorous kind, the kind that people think of when they think of the Super Bowl or Time magazine or of profitable ads that are worth selling. These ads don't sell because they work. They sell because they are sold.

Let me be fair: they work if we define 'working' as: pleasing the client, pleasing the agency, increasing brand goodwill, and building, over time, a groundswell of awareness and brand respect that ultimately leads to profits."

Not for sale

I received the following email today:

"I can pay you $35 for a text ad on your (website). The ad --for a free personals web site-- would consist of a couple of lines of text with links to the web site. I can pay via PayPal, or send you a check. Would you be interested?"

The post on which he wanted to place an ad was about the anniversary of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The only possible connection I could see was "lonely hearts" and "personals" but that's a reach.

I thanked him for his interest but turned down the $35. But it got me thinking. Would I have taken $350? No. $3,500? I know it's ridiculous, but I don't think I would. This space just ain't for sale.

Would you watch a thirty-second commercial online?

The title above has nothing to do with this post. I'm showing a friend how to post a video clip on YouTube, and then embed the player on a website.

And, yes, I would watch "a TV spot" online. I frequently drop in at the Apple site to watch the latest Get A Mac ads. And I can never get enough of the "I'm Working with Monkees" spots at Career Builder.

But what does it take to keep our thumbs off the Tivo FFW button? How do we create commercial messages that people will choose to watch?

Bidding for Bargains

eBay is ready to begin auctioning advertising airtime on 2,300 participating U.S. radio stations. The venture --which puts eBay into competition with Google-- includes both conventional terrestrial radio and Internet radio advertising. Stations in all of the 300 top-ranked radio markets are covered. Advertising inventory includes primetime spots with 90 percent in morning drive, midday or evening commute hours from Monday through Friday.

How (if at all) will this impact companies like ours that barter our services for radio station commercials? When you finish the quiz, close your Blue Book and raise your hand.

Internet’s ad share surpasses radio for the first time

Internet’s ad share surpasses radio for the first time. Radio’s share of advertising revenues held flat in the first quarter -- taking 6.6% of spending. But for the first time the Internet has a bigger share. It took 7.7%. TNS Media says radio is now fifth -- behind TV, magazines, newspapers and the Web. [Inside Radio]

24-second news cycle

"A typical News Moment segment includes seven seconds of lead stories, four seconds of developing news, the "International Second," "Weather on the 00:00:13s with Bob Van Dorn," "The Fastest Four Seconds in Sports," a two-second top stories recap, and wraps with four seconds of mixed entertainment and lifestyle pieces. In larger markets such as New York and Los Angeles, this last portion may be preempted by local news."

This brilliant send-up at theOnion.com reminded me of a recent promotional gimmick by one of the local TV outlets. Appears to be new enough that I can't find a reference on their website but it goes something like:

"We give you a full seven minutes of news before the first commercial break!"

I've been struggling to understand why that is something they're so proud of they mention it in the open to the newscast (Video: 10 sec Quicktime). The other stations have their first spot break 5 minutes in? I honestly don't get it. I'll record a clip and post it.

I can't post this (and sleep at night) without a word about the one-minute news "capsules" that air on all of our radio networks. I remember when our newscasts were five minutes (heck, I remember when we did a 15 minute newscast at seven in the morning). Then four. And now one. The only reason they are not shorter is we couldn't bolt on a 30 second commercial. [Onion pointer from Bob]

Google Audio: About Your Ad form

In another lifetime I wrote radio "spots." A lot of 'em. So please feel free to skip this "shop talk" post.

TechCrunch is getting reports from advertisers that Google Audio Ads have been added as an option to their Adwords accounts. Interesting to see the data collected  with the "About Your Ad" form (Goal of ad; target customer; key messages; call to action; etc.).

And this from the comments on the post: "I’ve been using Audio Ads for months now. I like how you can listen to the actual snippet of your ad being played on the station. I don’t like how you can’t choose a specific radio station, only the type of format and DMA."

Wonder how they're getting the mini-air check? I can see how advertisers would love that.

Bonus link: "Analysts Peek Into Google's Pitch to Radio" (Radio World)

How advertisers view consumers

The Break Up
Uploaded by geertdesager

"Child-safe and Disney-friendly"

Mark Ramsey (Hear 2.0): "the future of any audio entertainment that is financed by advertisers is a future where the content is child-safe and Disney-friendly - a future specifically monitored by agents with agendas to ensure that the inoffensive, the harmless, and the docile float to the top of what's "acceptable."

Which only means that we'll have to pay for the good stuff.

Daddy needs an upgrade!

Three new Mac ads. Choose a Vista, Genius and Party is Over. Am I just missing the Vista ads or have I developed some sort of "Windows blindness?"

Update: Thanks to Andrew for pointing me to a couple of Vista ads.

Another Update: "In the first three months of 2007, Mac sales jumped 36%, to 1.52 million units. That's more than three times the industry's growth average of 11%." Might be several factors but a good ad campaign didn't hurt. (BusinessWeek, May 14, 2007)

Commercial radio...without commercials

New York Times: "Facing increasing competition from satellite radio and iPods, Clear Channel Communications is trying something radically different at a commercial radio station in Texas: getting rid of the commercials.

As of today, KZPS in Dallas -- on the dial at 92.5 FM or online at lonestar925.com -- will no longer run traditional 30- or 60-second advertisements. Instead, advertisers sponsor an hour of programming, during which a D.J. will promote its product conversationally in what the company calls integration."

No such thing as an old junkie

This PSA is...disturbing. But I'm not sure what the target audience is. Not addicts. Probably not senior citizens. Is the message "If you do drugs, you'll die before you get old and helpless and they put you in a home?"

See what I'm saying? The PSA (created by amv bddo) has a high cringe factor but how effective?