Have you had a “Truman Show” Moment

In this week’s Behavioral Insider from MediaPost, the results of some <shameless self promotion warning> Burst Media research on consumers’ concerns about privacy. The “Truman Show” moment is a perfect analogy for when you see an ad that is just a little too relevant, like when Laura Linney turns around and does the product promotion for laundry detergent, and Jim Carrey gives his googly-eyed all.

The key finding from the research is that 80% of people online are concern about their online privacy as it relates to age, gender, income and web surfing habits.

See the research here and subscribe here to future reports.

Pulitzer is open to the web this year for journalism awards

I linked to Editor & Publisher today from MediaBistro to check out the front-runners for Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism this year. The Pulitzer jury meets next week in New York to pick finalists. I was curious to see if there would be any web entries. As it happens, Pulitzer rules changed last fall to allow submissions from web-only contenders. E&P identified a short list of five web publishers, without ties to offline media, that have entered: St. Louis Beacon, Voice of San Diego, MinnPost.com, ProPublica and the Center for Independent Media. It is interesting to note that each of these five entrants are non-profit news organizations. Why is that, I wonder? Does it make them more credible, or less exposed to market forces? Where’s HuffingtonPost? Or Slate? As noted on this blog recently Sam Stein of the HuffPost was a factor at Obama’s press conference recently.

Pulitzer rules allow for web sites that publish original content at least once a week and that do not have ties to broadcast or non-newspaper print. I think it’d be nice to see lot’s of web entries this time next year.

On the backs of farmers and builders

Today, Mediapost’s Online Media Daily features a dizzying collection of stories, one after the other, of targeting new-fangledness – Media6 social graphing, ClearSite ”next generation” behavioral targeting, Expedia’s Passport Ads to reach in-market travelers and paid search Super Converters, which I guess happen by accident. (They sound like quarks). It’s all best summarized by another story talking about the impact all of these features and benefits are having on the ad sales value chain, which now has so many links in it that it’s almost impossible to see the end from the beginning.

Someone once tried to explain to me that the world rests on the backs of farmers and builders. They are the only people that really make anything and the rest of us just mark-up their value and skim off the top. That is surely what seems to be happening to publishers online, today.  I wonder how long it continues?

Getting behind the wheel to drive

The IAB Annual Meeting that concluded yesterday in Orlando, FL., was an event with a broader agenda than just the Internet. The IAB meeting was a beginning referendum on the future of advertising. This is appropriate. After years as a smug, wise-cracking youth that was dismissive of traditional advertising and media, the Internet has it all on its shoulders now. A passing generation of media giants – magazine, newspapers and TV - is desperate for an heir. Along with everyone else, the old media guard has stood by waiting to see if the cocky self-assurance of the Internet would manifest itself in a new and improved advertising model - a one-to-one, risk free advertising model. Not yet, and despite the the bravado – or because of it – no has been quite ready to trust the Internet with the keys so that it can drive.

The Internet is in catharsis. The title of the IAB conference said it – “Brands battle back” – as did the conversations of everyone who attended and debated the art and science of persuasion. The Internet is trying to define itself in a world that needs it and that is weary of plugging holes in media buckets that have been leaking audience for 20 years. “Grow up” is all that’s left to say on the matter after 15 years of cheeky hair-dos and body art. DO something. Clean up your act.

One thing was clear from the Annual Meeting in Florida, the IAB is doing something. It has emerged as an advocate for the industry, and not just as its administrative assistant. It is leading, offering a panoramic view of the Internet landscape that shows unique form and function. It put some of that form on display with a video presentation, “I am the Long Tail“ that documented the passion of a few of the Internet’s legion of independent web publishers. It showed that it was willing to put the key issues on the table for discussion and invited provocation.

Which it got. Terance Kawaja, Managing Director of GCA Savvian Advisors, gave what may have been the most entertaining presentation during the two days, but one that was not, in the end, loaded with mirth. Terry speculated that the downward slope of prices online, brought about in part by the efficiencies of ad networks may, in fact, represent the true value of Internet advertising. Indeed, he said, it may even expose the true value of all advertising. Offering up the sins of the irrationally exuberant and sometimes fraudulent financial services industry to let us know he has walked in our footsteps and seen the way, Terry asked, what if Madison Avenue had been a giant deception for the last 100 years? What if it had perpetrated a fraud bigger than Enron, Worldcom, Stanford, Madoff and the sub-prime crisis put together by what it had charged customers to advertise over the years?

Not mirthful. Editors from the New York Times spoke after Terry and likely erased the thought that people may have been giving to what he suggested about media value over the years. They demonstrated the truly unique capabilities that only a digital medium can provide, such as their rock star graphics. But, people should pay attention because Terry’s comments, while offered tongue-in-cheek, express a true sentiment that lurks below the surface of the people sitting in judgment of our industry today, who are all members of the accounting classes. John Wanamaker was only half right, they think. In truth, it’s all wasted.

The IAB conference, therefore, was a beginning referendum on the future of advertising. In a pattern that has repeated itself since time began the next generation will have to answer for the sins and promises of its forebears and show the way forward. Just as surely this generation will stand on the shoulders of the past, and with mounting irony be called upon to rescue brand. 

It is a lot of responsibility for a 15 year old, but are we happier to have the Internet behind the wheel or television, which announced this week that it was feeling more effective than ever?

The answer is easy. Give me the keys, Dad. I’ll take us home.

IAB Annual Meeting: Brands Battle Back.

I have always been bothered by the fact that the Internet’s leading trade show is called “Ad Tech.” The name has implied from the start that the value proposition of our industry would be in the tools of our delivery, and it has led to a gum ball rally sort of race for one-to-one audience connections brought about by data and measurement. The result (no pun) today is a business heavily reliant on direct response, or performance-based advertising which is the only iteration of the advertising trade capable of holding-up the proposition.

The IAB’s annual meeting kicked-off yesterday with the theme, “Brands Battle Back”, and a call from IAB CEO Randall Rothenberg and Chairman, Wenda Harris Millard, to move beyond the immediacy of direct response and to invigorate the art, not just the science, of our business. Entering into our 15th year (roughly) as an industry, perhaps it is dawning on us, then, that our value proposition isn’t simply in the technology - any more than it is in the technology of other media. Audiences, after all, do not sink into their chairs at night to marvel at the fact that TV comes to them via a satellite in orbit over earth. Radio, still a miracle, is meaningful only if you like what’s on. Newspapers, delivered at enormous effort and expense (and also by satellite in cases), sell only if people are moved by the headlines.

The Internet is a marvel of content. Audiences respond to content. We need to sell the content. Internet content overwhelms the competition.

The IAB’s media partner for it’s annual meeting, Advertising Age, carries this story on the front page, today: “Guess which medium is as effective as ever: TV”. It sites evidence that TV advertising works and its effectiveness may be improving. The story reminds us that measurement and effectiveness as media value propositions are not unique and not high ground. If we want to challenge TVs dominant position on media plans today we must offer the chief reasons for why people would rather be online – and technology, measurement and effectiveness aren’t among them.

Time to battle back.

HuffingtonPost.com Makes it to the Front Row

Jon Freidman’s Media Web column today on MarketWatch was the first I heard about President Obama inviting a question from Huffington Post reporter, Sam Stein, at his recent press conference. Freidman suggests the act was enough to ruffle a few main stream media feathers. How great is that? Tra La. Can’t you picture the President pointing over all the other waving hands and saying “Sam,” and imagine the New York Times and CBS reporters and everyone else in the front rows dropping their hands and turning around to look. ”Sam? What Sam? Sam Donaldson?”

Nope.  Sam from HuffingtonPost – dot – freakin’ – com.

But, I exaggerate because, of course, Sam Stein is formerly of Newsweek and the New York Daily News and is probably chums with most everyone in the Washington Press Corp and may even have been in the front row laughing it up with his buddies. The point to make is that evidently a moment occurred at the President’s press conference that helped authenticate the blogosphere, thereby new media, thereby those of us that labor in support of its proposition: down with media tyranny; power to the people.

(Sigh.) Now, suddenly, I’m thinking of those old playground days and the sweet, sadly gratifying experience of being invited by the playground’s cool people to join them for lunch over by the rock, wherefore to spend the 30 minute recess snickering about all the ”losers” on the field. Oh, sweet corrupting power.

Don’t do it Arianna.

Not all Internet Inventory is Created Equal.

We have all argued at one point or another that Internet impressions are a bit like airplane seats: any revenue is better than no revenue. When an impression leaves the proverbial gate we want an ad on it. Afterwards, it’s gone for good and the opportunity with it. With the growth of social media (I read somewhere that the rise of social media had tripled – maybe quadrupled –  the number of impressions online) the Internet is awash with impressions and it’s starting to cause a panic that we’ll never be able to monetize them all. Worse, those people that are panicking about unsold impressions are causing other people to panic about the corrosive affect all those unsold impressions are having, generally, on the value of Internet inventory.  Martin Peers wrote about this in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.

The answer to this problem will be in the middle, as always. No one, even airlines, actually ever lets the inventory go for the change in your pocket lest it pull the value of what’s for sale completely under.  For now – especially given the economy -  the perception of the problem looms larger because the dominant advertising constituency online is direct response, or performance advertising. Everybody needs and wants a piece of it, including brand publishers that would consign it to the back of the plane if times were any better. Instead, they have to compete with social network inventory where direct response may comfortably thrive for as little as a nickel per thousand…or less.

But not all inventory is created equal, nor is all advertising.  Despite the existence of a 24 hour programming day, I watch maybe two hours of television a night when I get home, deciding between four channels out of 800. As far as I’m concerned, the world is equally awash with television. But, after a few generations of trial and error one person’s Super Bowl ad is another person’s Ginsu Knife.

Advertising Needs a Back-bone

Companies that accepted TARP bail-out money need to get a back-bone, says the editorial in Advertising Age this week, and dig-in against pressure from government minders who question the value of using those funds to pay for advertising and other marketing practices. Those companies also have to get their priorities right and stop flying around on fancy corporate jets, taking fancy retreats and paying excessive incentive bonuses, say the editors. Advertising is a necessary and important component of growing businesses and creating shareholder value and must continue.

How do we turn this editorial into a clarion call to the marketing industry as a whole? Get a back-bone. I’ve heard the John Wanamaker expression — you know, the one about which half of his advertising budget is getting wasted — so many times since the Internet appeared on the marketing scene to “solve” that problem that I’m convinced it’s become destructive. In the same issue of Ad Age this week, on the front page, is the report that Anheuser-Busch InBev is looking to trim $1.5 billion in agencies fees – roughly 25% – 30%. I referenced this issue in my blog post yesterday (“What would J. Walter Thompson do?”): we’re eating our young. Over the years, through quiet acquiescence as an industry we have enabled those who would destroy us.

In the final paragraph of its editorial Ad Age exhorts businesses to take the fight to Washington. “Even if it means marching up to Capital Hill, you must make the case for good businesses practices. And if you need some help doing so, know we’ll be right there with you.”

Ad Age is right. Unfortunately, it’s hard to think how the value of our business – that is, advertising - can prevail in Washington if it has failed to prevail in the corner offices of our own companies. I have this awful image of a Congressional hearing on the matter:

Congressman: “Well, what about that so-called Internet advertising? Is it true that you can count the number of times a person points at – or, what is it? – clicks on an advertisement?”

CEO: “Yes, Congressman.”

Congressman: “There you go then. Problem solved. All this other advertising voodoo we can take out back and -  you know - shoot it. Who’s for lunch?”

If the Content Matters, So Does the Advertising

PaidContent reports today on the results of research by Addvantage Media for YouGov that people don’t pay much attention to advertising online on large general interest sites. Only 12% of web users pay attention to ads on large web site. However, the power of interest-based long tail publishers is much stronger.  According to the report, 73% of users say they pay attention to the ads on specialty sites. A stark contrast.

What Would J. Walter Thompson Do?

I agree with just about everything Jeff Jarvis has to say – and has always had to say – about new media, most notably the power of niches. Small is the new big as long as the power is there to network, which the Internet, of course, provides. However, in several reviews about his new book (which I have not read), “What Would Google Do?”, reference gets made to Jeff’s view that ad agencies are doomed. More accurately, his view that their days as curators of brand messages are doomed. This is because in a networked world consumers can emerge on their own as the true brand owners with the power to shape and articulate brand image and value. Agencies as middlemen become irrelevant. Jeff’s well-documented “Dell Hell”experience on his blog, Buzzmachine, is a classic example of how one person’s experience can connect with the experiences of many other people to change brand behavior in a way that, eventually, rewards the brand. Agencies never enter into it.

That can change if marketers will re-invent how they compensate ad agencies by returning to a media commission standard. After all, that’s what Google does. Google gets paid on commission. It is the same with a lot of networks online that have made plenty sharing media revenues.

The economics of media commission works well in the new, networked economy that Jeff so rightly points out has taken over. The fee structure imposed on agencies over the last 20 years, does not. It’s killing them and it is holding back the ability of brands to adapt to the new media reality, which is open and distributed. Agencies still have possession of the budgets, but they have neither the financial means or incentive to distribute the money efficiently online. Consequently, so-called “brand dollars” get spent within easy reach, on a handful of web sites, while the rest of the money gets carried away by networks, including Google, where its future can be uncertain.

Agencies are starting to catch on. They aren’t choosing to try and re-negotiate how they get paid by marketers, yet, but they are thinking about how to get into the network business themselves and become commissioned media buyers again. They are in possession of the marketing strategy, the marketing data, and the marketing budgets. They just need to be able to share in the media spending in the same way other networks do online in order to take advantage of the available distribution.

If they succeed the outcome will be good for brands, long-term. Brands need advocates. Consumers make the best advocates, but agencies come second. In a competitive world, you need both. In the short-term, however, we need to be concerned about the transparency of agency goals and intentions and the conflicts of interest that may result from directing client business in the interest of profitability instead of client objectives. That may sound harsh and accusing, but it’s not. Agencies need relief, especially online where the future of brand marketers is playing out in places like Jeff Jarvis’s Buzzmachine.

In all of this it may be worth mentioning that J. Walter Thompson started out life as a magazine rep. He got into the business of helping customers and prospects create advertising as a way to facilitate selling more pages.  The rest is history, until now. Suffice to say that Thompson may have been responsible for the media commission model that sustained agencies like his until recent times. Were he here today, he might then be the one telling agencies they’ve got to get back into the media business.