VIA Interaction

Monday, September 25, 2006

OMMA East: Search and Behavioral Targeting

Omar Tawakol, SVP of Marketing, Revenue Science; Matt Spiegel, Managing Director, Resolution Media; John Mracek, VP product marketing, Yahoo; Anna Papadopoulus, Interactive Media Director, Euro RSCG; Fran Maier, Executive Director, TRUSTe.

Mracek said that Yahoo uses the information it collects about people's activites on its site to create categories - some 400 in all - to segment the audience. That can require very different creative for the same campaign.

How will advertisers know if this is the right tool? Papadopoulus said she looks at the vendor's ability; the creative team's ability to target; the client has to be willing to track its site and give that information to the agency and the vendor. Spiegel: What action are we really trying to push? Sales? Leads? Then what information do we really want to track.

What standardization should we have in behavioral categories? Transparency and granularity are key. Standardization is hard for these companies to agree to, transparency can solve it.

Is the data truly anonymous, and is it truly privacy safe? The advertising industry needs to come up with solutions for this. There could me a major controversy that would upset the entire effort to do this.

Mracek: Target at the right level and the right granularity in order to have a big enough audience to make it worthwhile. For example, a lot of people may be interested in California, but the number may drop when we ask for people who are interested in both California and a particular other state.

Are we at the point where we have enough data to make anything other than an educated guess? Mracek said they have an incredible wealth of data and a lot of research on modeling and categories. We can plug the data in and find a correlation between brhavior and interest in other categories. Scale is important. The technology back office that supports this kind of data mining is also in place. The last piece is the people who know how to handle this data and get what we need from it.

What's the difference between interest and intent? Tawakol said interest means reading an article or visiting a site. Same as engaged in Yahoo's terminology. The number of people with intent is obviously a lot smaller, but a lot more valuable.

What are clients doing? Agencies need to see how it's really working, Papadoplous said. Spiegel said 95 percent of his clients aren't doing it. They're still picking around the edges, but this is where they are going. If the conversion percentage is a lot bigger, it's an extremely valuable audience. This is starting to get to the top of the advertisers' radar. It needs to be made easier - agencies can't dissect which of twenty different offerings makes sense.

You say it works well for auto and financial, but what about retail? Mracek said it does work for some retailers, like a $3,000 HDTV. A pair of jeans? The jury's still out. Spiegel said they saw a 60 percent increase in high-end apparel retailer using behavioral targeting.

What behavioral targeting methodologies are out there? Spiegel said that they are all different and that it's less about the categories and more about the kind of filters you want to put on it and the target you want to reach. Tawokol said there are four methodologies: 1. They own the search (Yahoo). 2. Providers but it from third-tier searched. 3. Buying it from the advertiser. 4. The toolbar manufacturer, where you steal the data. Maier of TRUSTe said they are trying to certify spyware using criteria that protect the consumer.

To what degree is Yahoo's offering standardized? Mracek said it's fairly systematic in terms of how it's sold and how it's approached. You can buy a category in the same way you can buy the Finance Home Page. Eight of the top 10 pharmas, the top 5 banks, eight of the top 10 car rental companies buy it from us. It is becoming a standard practice in buying.

Mracek said Yahoo fills in the model based on behavior at Yahoo - not conversion info from the clicked-through site.

The future for Behavioral Targeting is the "integration of the funnel," Tawakol said, where marketers can achieve sequential messaging based on the behavioral model, and then move to cross selling and other fine-grained messaging based on behavior.

posted by Tim Beidel at 9/25/2006 12:23:00 PM

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OMMA East: Video on the Web

Expect to pay $30,000 to $50,000 per minute of high quality Web video, said Susan Bonds of 42 Interactive. Engaging people longer has a better brand impact.

posted by Tim Beidel at 9/25/2006 12:13:00 PM

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OMMA East: Keynotes and Morning Panel

New York City -- Dispatch from the Online Media, Marketing & Advertising Conference and Expo.

Geoff Ramsey, CEO of eMarketer:

TV advertising will be 1/3 as effective as it was in 1990 by 2010.

Online news sites get more visits per week than network news sites.

Fragmentation: The average TV watcher sees 100 channels and watches 15 a week. There are millions of Web sites but people look at about 17 a week.

54 percent of Internet users have consumed video. 25 to 33 percent do it regularly.

Rishad Tobaccowala, CEO of Denuo:

Topic was "How to throw out your plans, address crap and enjoy the ride."

Throw out your plans
Think of a three year plan three years ago when there was no You Tube, Flickr, Google, iPod or MySpace.

Disney had a smart strategy group and got rid of it. It was an additional step in getting a decision made.

Shifting sands: Time shifting, place shifting, shape shifting, power shifting and speed shifting.

In the last three weeks: NBBC, iTV, Windows Live, Amazon Unbox, Redstone and Preston part ways.

Point: The long-range plan doesn't work that well.

Address crap:
Percolation doesn't cut it in an espresso era: "If you think and you think and you think there is no iteration. You have to iterate to learn. You can't think your way into the future, you have to iterate your way into the future."

Mind your organization: Six CEOs he has met with have said the same thing: I know what to do but my people come in the way." We can't be ready for Web 2.0 when we are in Organization 1.0.

Mind your API: Companies don't know how to plug and play in the network. They are "porcupine-y." Ranges from blatant, subtle and "I really think you are stupid." Change that thinking: "Anybody you are dealing with you have to accept is as smart as you if not smarter." Caveat: He deals only with the very top or the young turks who have only been in an organiztion four years or less, and tries very hard not to deal with people in the middle.

People, not consumers or users: Get rid of the crappo language that we use.

How to enjoy the ride:
Hard core accountability, but with some new (additional) metrics: Outcomes, return on objectives (saving money can still be one), interaction, consideration, intent, net promoters (brand advocates minus people who hate your brand). Iterate to metric success through jazziness -- improvise, play off other people's music, company as a software release with alphas and betas, plug and play.

Be facilitative, see marketing as facilitation. This is the best time ever to be a marketer. Read many years ago that marketing is "identifying and meeting customer requirements" but found in his experience at large companies that they did not do that. It was hard to do and they had limited ability to meet those requirements. That's changed.

Be authentic. Kate Moss is popular because she has her own value system, sense of self, she's true and transparent. She doesn't shill, she just models.

Ross Levinsohn, president of Fox Interactive Media

Fox has an amazing story. They are launching popular sites, frequently leveraging My Space, all over the world.Thirty three billion page views on all properties last month.

Sixty percent of teens onthe Web create their own content.

Used the Simpsons premiere to create a cross-channel, immersive experience (sponsored by Burger King): Homer picked football games, seven minutes of the show was available for download prior to broadcast, etc.

Panel: Internet Speed Makes Media Planning in any Traditional Senseat Best Futile, at Worst Fatal

Tobaccowala, Levinsohn, Joe Marchese (head of online media practice group at Bainbridge, Carl Fremont, global media director for Digitas)

Fremont: Not abut eyeballs alone, but about engaging them.

Tobaccowala: There are three speeds and the slowest is people. Human beings change very, very slowly. Business models must iterate faster, but can't change every three to six months or you won't make any money. How you get to your business model does have to change every three to six months.

Levinsohn: In sme ways it is the same old thing: Find your audience and spend the money to reach them.

All agreed that you still have to rely on the old science but can't forget creativity. Both are necessary. Tobaccowala said numbers are important but "how you get there is the point of difference."

Levinsohn said two new acquisitions, Scout.com and IGN, embody the way Fox is going because they mix tools that enable people to contribute with professional content. "If you don't build something today with consumer and consumer input in mind, it's not going to go anywhere."

"If major advertisers don't realize they have to give up control, they are not going to reach the kind of audience they want," Levinsohn said. "Be open to be criticized. My Space and sites like it are the greatest focus groups ever."

He said that aggregating these really niche sites with small audiences will deliver the audiences that advertisers want. Marchese said that "one person can be just as influential to their 30 friends as Paris Hilton can be to 300,000. They are worh the CMP rate."

Tobaccowala said that the Long Tail is one thing, but don't forget the "Spiked Head": Citing LonelyGirl 15, he said most people hear about things from other media.

posted by Tim Beidel at 9/25/2006 12:05:00 PM

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Sunday, September 24, 2006

The way people behave

"Selling Soap" in today's New York Times may seem a bit far afield from interactive development, but understanding the way people work and behave is really at the heart of what we do.

We are wrestling with re-organizing a very large Web site, and no small aspect of the project is trying to imagine how people will take care of and improve the new site.

I have been personally involved in redesigning some Content Management interface screens at Analog Devices that will do exactly what the current interface allows, but in a way that is easier for the people managing the content. They don't use the current system now because they just don't like it.

It also doesn't hurt that we are working with some very accomplished doctors at Cleveland Clinic, where our project sponsor has been driving home the importance of data to drive decisions.

This article is about why hospitals have such low compliance with the simple edict to wash your hands and the ways one hospital tried to change that behavior.

It's written by the Freakonomics guys, Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt.

posted by Tim Beidel at 9/24/2006 11:05:00 AM

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Thursday, September 21, 2006

Advertisers trying to live with technology

I've got to tell you, I love my DVR. But I just can't stay engaged enough with the program I am watching and the remote control to be able to fast-forward through the commercials.

Still, it's a big concern for advertisers. Somebody has an idea about how to cope with the problem:

Fox Tries to Thwart DVR Fast - Forwarding - New York Times:

"LONDON (AP) -- Fox is running a 30-second television spot with just one static image in an effort to reach viewers who fast forward through ads using digital video recorders like TiVos.

U.K. advertisements for Fox's new drama, ''Brotherhood,'' which premieres in Britain in October, simply shows an image of Providence, R.I., where the show is set, and the program's logo. Viewers fast-forwarding through the ad would see the image for a few seconds; those watching it normally would hear dialogue from the show in the background.

Jon Hollett, a Fox International spokesman, said the company was experimenting with ways to get its messages to DVR users who routinely breeze through ads without antagonizing real-time viewers by broadcasting a flat, silent image for thirty seconds.

''This is something that is going to have to be addressed one way or the other,'' he said. ''Making sure that you can get to your viewers when they're fast forwarding ... is of crucial importance.'' "

posted by Tim Beidel at 9/21/2006 01:13:00 PM

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Thursday, September 14, 2006

"Value derived from the actions of users"

I like the definition of Web 2.0 provided by Information Week's Mike Elgen in Here's The Skinny On Web 2.0:

"Which brings us back to the question: What is Web 2.0? Here's my plain-vanilla definition: Web 2.0 is all the Web sites out there that get their value from the actions of users.

"To illustrate this concept: Yahoo News features both old-school Web mechanisms and Web 2.0 components. Comparing the two shows the stark difference between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 approaches to creating value.

Yahoo's Top Stories page lists articles according to what editors think should be on the page -- and in what order. The value of the page is provided by the judgment of professionals. But Yahoo's Most Emailed News page places and ranks stories based on the actions of users: Those stories that are e-mailed the most rise to the top. It's a Web 2.0 concept. The value of the page is derived from the actions of users."

Aside from the term users, which I have been trying to expunge from my own vocabulary and the vocabularies of those I work with, I love this definition.

As an ex-journalist, I find it extremely disheartening and amusing to see the difference between what editors choose as important and what people find interesting when comparing those kinds of lists on Yahoo.

posted by Tim Beidel at 9/14/2006 06:21:00 PM

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