Larry King Announces the End of “Larry King Live”

Larry King announced he’s retiring as host of CNN’s Larry King Live this fall after 25 years.  According to the transcript of his announcement on CNN’s web site, Larry King Live holds the Guinness Book of World Records title for the longest running show with the same host in the same time slot. Wikipedia says he has conducted 50,000 interviews.

I will always think of Larry King as the syndicated, all night radio host in the late 1970’s and mid 80’s that stayed up with America’s truckers and anyone else awake because of work, love or worry deep into the night.

I was one of those my senior year at college while working as a reporter for a local radio station and assigned to the Saturday morning broadcast beginning at 6:00 a.m. For that year, 50,000 farmers in Upstate New York – as many people as Larry has interviewed – would get their news from me, which I would get from the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle and the newswires beginning when I arrived at the station around 4:30 a.m. – usually, directly from the fraternity parties. The overnight engineer would be at the controls, the morning DJ, who played in a band 100 miles away on Friday nights, would be asleep on the couch in reception and Larry King’s show would be piping through the speakers in the ceiling with the sound - or at least the image - of him leaning over the microphone, chain smoking (which he did in those days), his finger on the pulse of the people.

“Fort Worth, Texas you’re on the air.”

“Hello Salt Lake, you’re on the air.”

I have always wondered what the Larry King legend would have become if he had remained purely associated with that overnight radio program. He became a celebrity, interviewing celebrities. I walked pass him once sitting at his power table in some Washington D.C. restaurant and I believe if I’d had the opportunity to share we could have bonded over the fact that I listened to him as a college student earning beer money working nights at WGVA in Geneva, New York: a square, cinder-block bunker on a hill with an antenna and broken office furniture.

“Geneva, New York you’re on the air.”

As media experiences go, it was formative. It is, perhaps, why I love the internet, especially the (real) people parts.

All Advertising is “Somewhat Subliminal,” Not Just Banners

As suitable follow-up to the tribute offered in this space to the creative banner winners at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival last week comes the report in Online Media Daily that banners manage to have a “somewhat subliminal” effect on consumers. Says the article by Laurie Sullivan:

“Consumers say they ignore static banner ads, and don’t click on them, but eMarketer Senior Analyst David Hallerman cites stats from a Microsoft Atlas study that suggest the static strips running across the tops of Web pages still influence purchase decisions.”

The science behind the report is not detailed in the story. It appears we may have to wait for the release of a study from Microsoft Atlas. The supposition, however, fits comfortably with our understanding of the real world: consumers would prefer to ignore advertising.

Interestingly, the world is divided over how to deal with that problem. One side feels free to engage consumers with intrusive creative formats that launch in their face. The other continues experimenting with the creative potential of banners, and their associated standard IAB unit cousins.

The intrusive, “gotcha” crowd wants to trade robust creative in the form of sight, sound and motion in exchange for a few moments of consumer attention. They are a bells and whistles crowd. Their “As long as you’re here” counterparts on the opposite side rely on the environment of the web sites for help with audience engagement. They are a permission-driven crowd.

“Somewhat subliminal”, however, applies to the affect both of them have on advertising influence. One is quietly subliminal. The other is overtly subliminal. One is “I ignore you because for a minute I didn’t see you hiding there,” and the other is, “I ignore you because you’re loud and obnoxious.” The only affect advertisers can hope to have, in the absence of great creative, is “somewhat subliminal.” Beyond that, it’s just a question of what impression they desire to have remain in the consumer subconscious.

Which sounds like a reason to keep working on great banner advertising.

Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival: Cyber Award Winners

The 57th Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival has been going on this week and once again, as a public service, the winners in the Cyber Lion Award category are featured in this space as a reminder that advertising is a creative business.

The complete list of Cyber Lion Award winners is available here. They are all great. But the Cyber category, itself, is inclusive of web sites and microsites and other Internet designs that - while creative and compelling - somehow don’t to rise to the level of coaxing great advertising out of a humble banner unit, which must share space with the content of a web site and be equal to the user’s level of engagement. We’re (mostly) celebrating the incredible work that has been done inside banners this year.

In the case of Unilever’s AXE, it won a Silver award with a rich media banner unit from BBH New York, which has AXE’s testosterone-fueled pitch to men surround-sounded. I don’t have headphones in my office, but I can get the idea listening to the audio through my speakers. I do have headphones at home, which is where I also have my wife; but maybe if she understands this is research for the blog.

The darker side of testosterone was behind the only banner/rich media unit to earn Cyber Gold. This was a public service campaign from TBWA Paris for AIDES, the leading association in the fight against aids in France. The campaign is a reminder of two things – well, three things: 1) advertising communicates so much about us as people, culturally, around the world; 2) Europeans, especially the French, are far less closeted about sex than Americans (who, in turn, are far more fascinated by violence); 3) wear a condom.

Virgin Atlantic’s banner campaign from Y&R in New York about fear of not flying Virgin Atlantic was another Silver award winner. The banners need to be seen as a group.

How do you make advertising intrusive without making it intrusive? In an ingenious spot of technical innovation, Genetix Sound Studios in Warsaw, Poland changed the front page news of press.pl into 250 “sound illustrations” to impress a client prospect. It’s not clear to me if they won the client, but they won a Silver Cyber Lion Award.

There were a number of winners that relied on user web cams, thus enabling users to experience the thrill of staring back at themselves from within the banner ad on their computer. Users love advertising, obviously.

Volkswagen had a well-designed, straightforward Bronze winner for its Brazilian Fox car thanks to ALMAPBBDO in São Paulo, BRAZIL. My favorite in the Bronze category, however (and, really, it should have managed Silver) was for another car company, Renault, for its Baby Boom campaign intended to promote the youthfulness of the Renault product line. The agency was PUBLICIS NET in Paris. The execution was clean and simple and interesting.

Banner advertising didn’t make it into the exclusive, Grand Prix award category. But Volkswagen won a Grand Prix for work by DDB Sweden promoting VW’s BlueMotion technology that helps reduce environmental impact without compromising performance. The award was for integrated work including videos that captured the essence of the campaign’s message: making things better by making them fun. VW and DDB called it, The Fun Theory.

Hmmm. The Fun Theory. On days like this, as a value reminder, we could call that advertising.

The IAB’s Long Tail Alliance Fly-in

Over 40 web publishers showed-up in Washington, D.C. this week for the IAB’s second annual Long Tail Alliance Fly-in. Participants spent a day and a half comparing notes and taking their case for prudence to Congress when it comes to privacy legislation. These publishers were reflective of the vast majority of Internet content-producers who are small independent businesses that depend on the well-reasoned working of the advertising business online to support their enterprise and passion.

I’ve consumed my fair share of chardonnay and shrimp canapés as a frequent Internet conference attendee hanging-out in proximity to the beautiful people of the Short Tail. Long Tail people, I can report, are their equal when it comes to networking with a glass in one hand. And in this case, the canapés – avocado and crabmeat, and other stuff I can’t remember – weren’t bad either thanks to Google, which hosted dinner at their place in Washington. They have a very nice penthouse office suitable for entertaining (government officials).

The conversation among Long Tail publishers is a highly saturated version of what you’d get milling around the carving station at Short Tail events where the conversation mostly grazes the surface: “Oh yes. Fun. We should talk about that. Call me when you’re back on the West Coast.” In comparison, one of the Long Tail publishers at the Fly-in was persuaded to host an impromptu seminar back at the hotel on how to sell advertising directly to clients as a publisher. By the end of the first night it was my impression everyone knew exactly how much money everyone was making this year.

Long Tail publishers do not live in a highly compartmentalized world. There are no Vice Presidents of Business Development. Long Tail publishers are the Manager and the Employee and, pursuant to our world, they are content experts. Not simply experts at coding and posting content (which is to say, experts at how the World Wide Web actually works), but experts in regards to what their users want. They are rabid about what their users want. I sat next to a long-time customer of Burst Media who enables a considerable amount of automotive e-commerce across her web site. “Do you take a fee on those transactions”, I asked? “I don’t take anything from my users,” she answered.

Right. Of course not.

The Short Tail world is up in arms about ad networks and exchanges. Here’s a tip: hire a couple of Long Tail-ers as consultants. Long Tail people know ad networks. Most of them don’t have the luxury of considering life without them, and they’ve learned which ones can be relied upon and which ones can’t. They can walk you through the network user interfaces, payment schedules, contract terms, ad quality, fill-rate, chances of ever reaching a human being by telephone, eating disorders, favorite movies – all of it. Most of them have the networks chained in a pen in the yard where they can look securely on them while working in their home offices and, as required, lean out the window to yell, “Hey! Shut your yaps!”

It’s the blessed lack of pretense that pervades a Long Tail Fly-in and reminds you that – actually – you may be back in Kansas.  And, if there’s been anything about new media more compelling (or more disruptive) than its sheer diversity, it’s been the lack of pretense compared to traditional media – which for marketers trying to align their brands with substance may be something to keep in mind.

Media Arbitrage Reaches the Large Intestine

I missed the Rubicon event in New York yesterday that featured a panel of experts bravely wading into the media question of our day, “Is All Inventory Created Equal?” Fortunately, a colleague was there to take notes, which she shared this morning. From her recounting, I can barely stand the fact I wasn’t there.

Brian Morrissey of AdWeek moderated. Participants were Bill Todd from ValueClick, Marta Martinex from Media Math, Sean Kegelman from VivaKi, and Jason Kelly from Time, Inc.

There was a survey in advance about DSPs: good or bad for publishers? Befitting the industry, the results were rigorously risk averse: 49% said maybe. Love that. But some credit should go to the 21% who answered DSPs are “Great” for publishers, and the 29% who said, “Great for advertisers, but not publishers.”

There was no such ambivalence with regards to transparency: 70% of respondents to the pre-event survey agreed that adequate transparency into web sites on a media plan does not exist today. That’s a shame, because 64% of respondents believed high quality content adds value to advertisers and another 24% believed context mattered to advertisers regardless of whether it’s published by a brand-media company or not.

What a pickle.

The data portion of the program behind them, panelists waded into the content. The ball appears to have gone back and forth across the net a few times between Jason Kelly, beleaguered defender of content, and the DSPers, Sean Kegleman and Marta Martinez, advocates of the Data Age. Data yes, content no. Content yes, data no. Data yes, content no. Content yes, data no.

Whatever.

Two themes reportedly emerged, and they are the important ones:

Theme 1: There is a lack of trust among all players in the industry;

Theme 2: Ad networks = outsourced media buying. But, today, there is a new source of media aggregation; ergo, ad network services are no longer required.

Ergo, agencies and their DSP proxies are the new ad networks.

The Rubicon panel revealed that the classic ad network model is moving through the industry value chain to its inevitable release into the atmosphere where it will be returned to the earth from which it came. As it goes (wherever it goes), it continues to breed mistrust. This is clear. But, mercifully, we should expect the pace of its escape through our system to accelerate now that it is in closer proximity to the client’s business because all customers desire transparency, including agency customers. The purge will be hastened by the forces of the macro-environment, notably IPG’s MagnaGlobal forecast this week that online ad spending will reach $100 billion, globally, by 2015. It is a dose of the supply side. Market medicine.

Of course, at $100 billion ad agencies will be utterly overwhelmed by the media economy unless we race to their rescue with new compensation models. In this space, the proposal has been made repeatedly to restore 15% ad agency compensation. Backwards as it may seem to lead us, it is unquestionably baked into the brave new world thanks to the arbitrage model agencies are confiscating from ad networks. Have the markets finally spoken as to the cost of media planning?

Show me.

Until then, I’m anticipating the (inevitable) next panel in the series of media and brand value discussions titled, “Is All Soap Created Equal?” This one is to reportedly be sponsored by Google.

Will Yahoo Push Associated Content onto Its Newspaper Consortium?

Yahoo is thinking that its recent purchase of Associated Content will add value to local newspapers in its Newspaper Consortium, according to a brief report in Paid Content today.

Content farms work in reaction to the ebb and flow of human interest…

…wait, that’s journalism. The information economy already does that…

(Start again.)

Content farms manufacture news and information in as near real-time as possible relying on search algorithms in order to harvest human interest for sale to advertisers before human interest moves on later that day.

Or something wonderfully contrived like that.

Now Paid Content reports that Yahoo would be delighted to put Associated Content to work for the 800+ members of the Yahoo Newspaper Consortium, which is interesting on a few levels beginning with the possibility that Associated Content information would compete for space with the content of consortium newspapers.

Hilary Schneider, EVP, Yahoo Americas,  says no; on balance Associated Content would not be confused with newspaper content. But how would it not be confused, and to what value if you are a newspaper?

If the content is clearly differentiated – as in, “No newspaper reporting jobs were harmed in the making of this content” – will users care? If the users don’t care, will the advertisers? If the users don’t really matter – as in, content distribution is content distribution and once it leaves the building no one cares, including the advertisers – what value was created?

Always value. Fortunately, it is never a silent partner. So, to the extent that Yahoo is successful prevailing upon its Newspaper Consortium to accept Associated Content, the end-user value of that content will have to emerge to atone for the advertising money that is spent and made. In the process, Associated Content may shed some of its “content farming” roots and feel the tug of the Big City. That might require it to be more grown-up and thoughtful and make it less nimble in the “just-give-them-what-they’re-searching-for” business, and it might even lead them to regard the Associated Press as the new competition not, say, Demand Media.

Thus, back to reading the newspaper. It’s the circle of (media) life isn’t it?

What New Media Can Learn By Watching Television

Did I mention that I think Doug Weaver says some very smart things about the Internet business? Here’s an example from his blog, “The Drift”, yesterday.  

“All we ever seem to talk about in web marketing circles is the technology that will help us regather the television audience diaspora.  In a world where mass is just a memory, we pine to become the new mass.   Both network TV and basic cable channels seem to be doing fine with the new economics that surround TV’s creative renaissance, so is it possible that the smartypants web folks might just be missing the point?   That by overvaluing our audience-aggregation technologies and undervaluing our audience-delighting creative instincts we might just be dressing for a game that nobody is playing anymore.”

You may want the background to what he’s saying – all to do with declining mass reach of television audiences transitioning into higher quality niche programming – so go read the blog. The above paragraph, however, stands on its own. It describes the pervasive irony of new media which is, and has been, the extent to which its players want to be like old media: massive, like the good old days of broadcast television.

So went the history of portals online and, as it has been argued in this space before, the history of AOL and Time Warner. So, indeed, might go the history of audience-aggregation technology. Fundamentally new media wants to be old media, starting with the desire to be big.

Of course, being “big” (as opposed to, say, the best) is a peculiar pathology of business that can be left to the experts. But I have marveled over the years at how hard it has been for interested third parties –people in the capital markets, for instance – to grasp the smaller scale and relative value of niche content online, which was the obvious consumer bonanza brought about by the industry.

“How do the people developing these sites make money?” has been the question of the interested third parties, the question underneath really being, “How do they make serious money, like TV networks makes money?” And, if they don’t make TV money can we take them seriously?

The industry still can’t bring itself to fully confront the answer to that question. It dithers, aggregating audience as impersonal data points to avoid meeting them at their chosen web addresses, modest as they might be.

But, fine. The villagers always win out in the end, just like on television.

iMojo

I hooked-up the 3G + Wireless iPad to the Bose stereo yesterday in anticipation of showcasing its marvels to an old friend who is a true music aficionado with deep, deep reservoirs of knowledge about all things rock & roll. He and his wife were at the house for outdoor barbequing befitting the holiday weekend and I was looking forward to giving him access to virtually every piece of music ever recorded via iTunes and the iPad. Over the course of the evening he led me on an exploratory journey of Fleetwood Mac’s blues roots dating back to 1967 and founding member, Peter Green. I spent over $30 on new music, but I now have the original version of “Black Magic Woman” – which I always thought was a Santana song. I’m a better person for it, I’m sure.

I’m also sure I sold another iPad for Apple, bringing the total, according to a report by Steve Smith in MIN Online, to 2,000,001 iPads in 59 days. And that number went up again minutes ago when a colleague at Burst came in to proudly present her new iPad which she bought at lunch today at Costco. They were just unpacking the shipment when she got there. 2,000,002 in 60 days.

iPad has mojo. In MIN online Steve Smith writes:

“Even the most optimistic analyst projections expected iPad sales of 5 million units or so this year, but the current pace is well ahead of those estimates. RBC Capital is now predicting Apple will sell over 8 million iPad units worldwide this year. By our count of apps listed in the iTunes store, there are over 8,000 programs available for the iPad.”