Every one of Pontiac’s marketing dollars to introduce its sporty G5 coupe is being spent online.[AdAge.com]
No idea if Pontiac will do anything particularly clever but thus Belgian men’s magazine did… and I thought these were pretty nifty as well.
Clear Channel Radio has found its first buyer for blinks, its new one- to three-second radio spots. Fox Broadcasting Co. is the first to purchase and use two-second radio spots in an effort to promote the fall season premiers of “Prison Break,” “House” and “The Simpsons.” [AdAge]
Tod Maffin calls these “pop-up’s for radio.”
From Podcasting News:
“About.com, a New York Times property, has launched a sponsored medical podcast about heartburn and acid reflux. Each podcast will be approximately three to five minutes long and will be introduced monthly. The series –the first of its kind on About.com– is sponsored by AstraZeneca, a pharmaceutical company that makes Prilosec and Nexium heartburn and acid reflux medications.”The podcasts allow us to provide educational information to patients in a unique and creative way,” said Dana Settembrino, brand communications manager, AstraZeneca.
Topics to be covered include: What Causes Heartburn; Acid Reflux and Your Diet; How to Talk to Your Doctor about Acid Reflux; Exercising with Acid Reflux; and How Stress Affects Your Acid Reflux.
According to Marjorie Martin, general manager, ABOUT Health, “Podcasts provide an exciting new format for delivering trusted health information. Users can now choose to listen online or take the information with them. This series on heartburn and acid reflux disease should provide the millions of sufferers with the tools to better manage their condition.”
Dr. Mona Khanna, M.D., M.P.H. is the program’s host. “Dr. Mona” is a quadruple board-certified practicing physician and Emmy award-winning medical correspondent.”
We covered heartburn on the Living Healthy Podcast back in February.
I find Henry’s conversational style more to my taste than Dr. Mona’s scripted read, but I’m hardly objective. Would love to know what AsstraZeneca is paying for this and their expectations. But one can assume they think this makes more sense than 30’s and 60’s. About.com seems like a good fit. You go looking for info on heartburn…and find a podcast on the subject.
But how sustainable is this? I think sponsoring something with broader topic scope might make more sense.
Keith and the Girl fans received an email today, touting a new movie coming out in a couple of weeks. Crank stars Jason Statham (Snatch, The Transporter, The Italian Job) and opens September 1st. The email pointed me to the trailer:
“It’s a cool ad, and it brings KATG a little scratch whenever it’s viewed. So take a look-see and pass it to your friends. And then get back to work! How are we gonna survive as a society if everyone’s watching movie promos all day?!”
I really like Statham so I was glad to know about the movie. And I’m even more inclined to watch the trailer (and tell others) because it helps KATG… and I’m a fan. Do you see how this is different than just running the ad on one of the TV networks? Would love to know how much KATG got for this. Hope it was a lot.
“While Rocketboom reaches a mass audience, Baron sees his next opportunity in niches. As an example, he suggests a program to target “high-end tennis players.” It would be natural for Wilson Sporting Goods to advertise tennis racquets and “Viewers might actually be interested in the commercials,” Baron said. He believes that while only 10,000 people might watch, it’s so cheap to do Internet video that such programming is economically feasible.”
— Rocketboom’s Andrew Baron on possible sponsorship opportunities
Tod Maffin is looking forward to the day his satellite radio delivers ads he wants to hear:
“So, let’s take this to its natural next step in, say three years. You call up XM or Sirius and activate your radio. Besides asking for your billing address, they also seek out some basic demographic information. How old are you? What are your interests? Suddenly, your radio begins playing ads that are aimed at you and people like you. With my demographic profile in hand, the satellite service could have screened those (crappy spam-like ads) out and sent me ads specific to my interests.”
I sort of dread going through some long “check the products and services you’re interested in” procedure, but you’d only have to do it once and then keep it updated. Then, maybe once a month, they send me a link to a web page where I see a list of all the advertisers that hit my reciever in the past 30 days. I remove any that I don’t like. Sort like signing up for Netflix. Or, maybe they just have a bot crawl this blog and figure out what I care about.
Does it do me (as an advertiser) any good to force someone to watch or listen to a commercial for my product or service, if they don’t want to? I can argue that my commercial is what paid for the free TV show they’re watching so it’s only fair that they watch it. Doesn’t matter. If the ad is about something I don’t care about (most of them)…Tivo fast-forward.
If you can find a way to show me ONLY the ads I care about, I’ll probably watch them. But Dave Winer says the end of advertising (as we know it) lies at the end of that road:
“When they finish the process of better and better targeted advertising, that’s when the whole idea of advertising will go poof, will disappear. If it’s perfectly targeted, it isn’t advertising, it’s information. Information is welcome, advertising is offensive. Who wants to pay to create information that’s discarded? Who wants to pay to be a nuisance? Wouldn’t it be better to pay to get the information to the people who want it? Are you afraid no one wants your information? Then maybe you’d better do some research and make a product that people actually want to know about.”
I think what Winer is saying is that once you get the right information…about the right product (specifically for me)… you won’t HAVE to pay someone to put it in front of me. I will already have made that happen or have facilitated it. I WANT to know more about your product/service. At that point, it’s no longer advertising.
The point he’s trying to make is a subtle one and hard to grasp if you’ve grown up bombarded by radio and TV ads. For better or worse, we won’t have to wait long to find out if he’s right.
“In its biggest offline media play to date, online search giant Google this morning announced plans to begin extending the reach of its online search advertisers to the nation’s largest satellite radio service, XM Satellite Radio. The deal is the latest development in Google’s push to expand beyond the Internet into the traditional media marketplace, and follows a series of tests with print media and radio outlets.”
— Media Daily News [Thanks, XM Ben]
From today’s C|NET story on Google and radio advertising:
“So why the excitement? dMarc automates the process of buying ads, placing them in time slots and tracking them, which is usually done by ad agencies over the phone, experts said. Automation could lead to efficiency, and that means lower prices for advertisers while bringing in more sales for the radio stations. … The Google-dMarc system would be a big change from the current ad-buying system, where ad salespeople establish personal relationships with radio stations. Advertisers could better quantify how well an ad campaign is doing and modify the ads quickly depending on the response rate from listeners.”
Which reminded me of this from Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail:
“Meanwhile on the other side, those ad-driven media have their own ad sales forces. They pitch the advertisers and their media buyers on the virtues of their advertising vehicles. If all goes well, millions of dollars change hands. All of it is labor-intensive and made even more costly by the expensive schmoozing that’s required in businesses where a lack of trusted performance metrics makes salesmanship and personal relationships key to winning businesses.”
Only time will tell if Google can make this elephant dance, but revenue in Google’s most recent quarter was $2.5 billion, nearly double what it was a year ago. And Google has the money and time to figure this out:
“What’s neat about this is the radio stations get to preview the creative copy and we pre-approve all rates before they get aired. Radio stations and Google will explore on a case-by-case basis which opportunities make sense.”
The scariest quote in the story for me was:
“The fact that (what Google is trying) is more electronically based gives advertisers more comfort that they are getting what they are buying.” Ad agencies and stations “are still faxing invoices to each other and typing up affidavits.”
All of this brings back memories of Google’s earliest days. Everybody that used it said, “Damn, this is cool! THIS is how search is supposed to work. But, uh, how are they gonna make any money with this service if it’s free?” $2.5 billion last quarter. Maybe they’ll figure it out.
I’ve been intrigued (anxious?) by Google’s plans for taking AdSense to radio but can’t seem to find out much about it. A Technorati search this morning took me to the Google Operating System blog (pretty sure it’s not connected to Google), and a post featuring excerpts from Google’s Q2 2006 earnings conference call, during which Google CEO Eric Schmidt said this about AdSense for radio:
“We are in the process of introducing AdSense for radio, which is essentially the integration of the dMarc Console and management tools into our advertising network. The dMarc team itself is fully integrated. We’re expanding it both in engineering and sales. We’re also doing it worldwide, not just in the U.S. There’s a number of very, very interesting deals being negotiated. They’re on an integration schedule of about three months from now, so every week there are more milestones, and they’re working very hard.”
From that post I jumped to an earlier one:
“Schmidt thinks that “when he is listening to the radio in his car, radio ads should personally address him about his needs. For example, while driving past a clothing store, a radio ad should remind Eric that he needs a pair of pants and instruct him to turn left at the upcoming clothing store.”
The GPS system should help radios deliver targeted ads based on information about the person. Google Maps could provide details about local businesses, the ads would be audio AdSense ads, while the information about user’s needs could be obtained from the searches or from his ToDo lists (a gadget for Google Desktop and Personalized Homepage).
dMarc Broadasting, recently acquired by Google, “connects advertisers and agencies directly to radio stations with a robust advertising platform that automates everything from sales to scheduling, delivery and report”. So this company is the first brick in the development of a new breed of radio advertising.”
Here’s what the dMarc website promises advertisers:
“dMarc Media Networks brings unprecedented immediacy to radio buys. Imagine the difference. In minutes instead of days or weeks, you can now build your own custom networks, selecting from 100’s of stations in virtually any market, through a single, source.
* Real time reports generated without human intervention
* Buy individual or multiple stations in one market or many
* Buy only those stations you really want
* Monitor feedback in real time
* Be notified instantly when ads play
* Upload spots anytime, in seconds, 24/7I have no idea if dMarc can do all of that. Or, if radio station would want them to be able to do all of that. But I’m damned sure these are the things advertisers want and –increasingly– are insisting on.
The big question would seem to be, what’s the incentive for radio stations to participate in such a “network?” Station owners must be convinced they can make more money (or more profit) with Google AdSense than they can make on their own. IF …and it’s a big if… Google could find a way to sell EVERY ONE OF MY AVAILS…EVERY DAY… at a rate that didn’t jam me up with my local sales effort… then I might try it.
I confess it’s difficult for me to imagine that. But if Google (and others) can condition advertisers to expect measurable results and accountability — and that seems to be happening — who knows. Newspapers probably could not imagine a time when some oneline service could take away their classified ad revenue.
And during the 17 years I called on radio station managers, the #1 problem (at least in the small and medium markets) was finding good sales people. Owners have automated everything else at the radio station, why not sales?
Can any of you radio guys out there educate me on the dMarc thing?
Update: I received this explanation from a small market PD here in Missouri. Name and some particulars withheld by request.
“We operate Scott Studio’s for on-air. All hard drive audio music, liners, jingles, and commercials…with touch-screen operator computers. dMarc bought Scott Studios, and the primary commercial scheduling software Scott recommended for their system. Then Google bought dMarc.
We build our logs with our local commercials, then they can fill unused avails with their commercials. They fill the avails and upload spots all from their end, we never touch them….other than play them. I believe we have some controll over what hours they can fill, I know they don’t fill in 7a, 8a, 9a, 4p or 5p. They are :60’s and for refinancing, insurance, music collections (surfin USA the best of the beach, and stuff). Right now the clients aren’t any major chains or local businesses.
At the end of the month they send us a check for what they have run. How much I’m not sure per spots but I’ve been told the monthly check is around $X,000.
They run a lot of them in the evenings when we don’t usually have a lot of commercials scheduled. We carry Royals baseball. The 4 hour broadcast has 20 minutes available, they will fill several minutes of that and we get paid. When logs are lighter there are more in midday and afternoon.
The commercial content is not terribly exciting, it’s more spots, but it’s income that comes from unsold inventory mostly in evenings. Not a lot different than the ad’s that used to run where you are paid if someone calls and 800 number and buys Hooked on Phonics or something. I know I should probably understand this better as PD but this comes from a small station where the owner is here and does mornings/logs, etc.”
No, I think you understand (and explain) it just fine. Easy for the station. Easy for the advertiser. And I suspect the Google influence has yet to kick in. Classic Long Tail example. And I’m betting there are thousands of advertisers that will buy this time (if it’s easy enough and the price is right) without ever treading on local sales. If there’s a loser in this equation, I fear it might be programming vendors that operate on a barter basis.