Media buyers should reconsider what has long been a goal: reaching as many consumers as possible, Carat North America CEO David Verklin told the audience Tuesday at OMMA East in New York City. Reach, said Verklin, will be far less important in the future. "In the digital age," he said, "we need to be able to manage thousands of small placements," as opposed to just the "big blockbuster properties." To illustrate, he told the audience what he considers the biggest waste of ad dollars today: "Putting a PoliGrip ad in front of a person with a full set of teeth." "It's not about reaching every consumer," he said. "It's about reaching the right consumers." By contrast, Peter Weedfald, senior vice president, consumer electronics and North America corporate marketing at Samsung Electronics, Inc., proposed that the advantage to the Web wasn't just that it allowed for more precise targeting, but also for greater frequency and consistency than TV. "The Internet is the fastest, most dauntless, most assiduous weapon I have to build demand," Weedfald said. It's also one of the cheapest, he added. For example, he said, Samsung always runs a banner ad on certain Web sites--giving the company persistent exposure on those sites. "I'd like to be able to do that on TV," Weedfald said at a panel discussion Tuesday morning. But, he added, the expense was prohibitive. "What do you think they would charge me to run a banner at the bottom of 'Friends'?" he asked. "A billion dollars? Five billion?" Carat's Verklin also proposed that audience members develop marketing budgets that allocate between 15 and 20 percent of ad dollars for digital media. Current estimates hold that between 4 and 5 percent of total ad dollars are spent online.
Amid a whirlwind of stock trading activity, French corporate raider Vincent Bolloré has increased his stake in Aegis Group to 8.04 percent from 6.04 percent fueling speculation that he may be mounting a takeover. The move follows Public's Groupe's announcement that it has held preliminary talks with the Aegis board about acquiring the London-based media buying and marketing research holding company. Publicis also continued to buy and sell shares of Aegis stock over the past several days, though it has yet to amass enough of a stake to register among Aegis' major shareholders. The increase in Bolloré's position, which came as a result of two transactions made on Monday, places him as the second largest shareholder behind Harris Associates, a Chicago-based fund manager that has influenced the outcome of other big ad agencies in the past. According to executives familiar with Harris' holdings, the firm also manages a sizeable stake in Publicis and may be poised to broker a deal. The stakes are managed by Harris' David Herro, who is known as an "activist" manager who came to fame on Madison Avenue when he influenced the ouster of Maurice and Charles Saatchi from the agency that bears their name in 1994, but which is now part of Publicis. Amid the Madison Avenue speculation, several research firms also are said to be eyeing Aegis' research assets and could become a factor should the company officially go into play. Bolloré, meanwhile, has made hundreds of millions since taking his initial stake in Aegis last month, but may be looking for more than a cash return on his investment. He is also the biggest shareholder of Paris-based agency holding company Havas, which is in dire need of a major strategic move such as a big acquisition.
The hope that ad agencies and sellers will find a way to include streaming video buys in the whole media buy emerged as the central theme of speakers at Tuesday's OMMA East panel "Buying Video on the Web--Whose Job is it Anyway?" The panel, moderated by Adam Herman, senior vice president and interactive media director at Beyond Interactive, was convened to address streaming video's current and future place in the media-buying universe. Christine Peterson, engagement specialist and media supervisor at Carat Fusion, said she never wanted to hear the terms "interactive planning" or "traditional planning" again. "For streaming media to be totally integrated, we should just be thinking about 'communications planning,'" said Peterson. "That's the only way to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts." Peterson added that her clients' perceptions vary widely with regard to the role of streaming video. "Some clients consider their broadband channels as just another cable network in terms of spending." How do marketers get the unconverted to spend on video over the next round of budget discussions? With better measurement, more standardization, and the power of suggestion, the panelists said. Russell Booth, MediaCom's interactive media director, said he indeed needs to see more of both measurement and standardization, but he also acknowledged the power that a single compelling planner can have on the distribution of dollars. Steven Goldberg, vice president of business development at 24/7 RealMedia, agreed with the need for greater measurement and standardization, adding that his hands will remain tied until demand for particular categories of broadband video reaches a critical mass. "I can't convince my clients until that perception of critical mass exists," he said. Added Goldberg: "Our advertisers want ease of use and ease of execution, and that still needs a lot of work."
A surprising study of teens around the world seems to promise a future that is paradoxically both bright and uncertain for the advertising industry. While today's teens are far more receptive to advertising's goals and methods than previous cohorts, the study found that they continue to reject advertising in the one arena marketers are most excited about: the "new" media of mobile devices and the Internet. The study--a joint effort by Yahoo!, OMD, and consultant Teenage Research Unlimited (TRU)--focused on teens in China, South Korea, Mexico, the U.S., U.K., Germany, Russia, and India--using interviews, focus groups, and statistical measures to paint a picture of the growing role of new media in the teenage world. This broad ethnographic study suggests a trinity of "core values" embraced by millions of teens who use "new media": "community," "self-expression," and "personalization." Community and self-expression are self-explanatory, denoting the basic human need to feel that one belongs, and at the same time stand out from the pack. Personalization of technology provides the main means of fulfilling both these needs. "The Net, for example, provides them with bulletin boards and chat rooms that allow them to spend time with other people and feel that they're part of something," according to Dan Drath, Vice President, TRU. "But as much as they're trying to be part of something, they're also looking to express who they are as an individual--to stand out." The first two "core values" are rooted in an ethical worldview recognizable to most adults, but teens often voice them in ways that older observers may find bizarre or incomprehensible. For example, the idea of making friends on other continents through online gaming strikes many adults as fantastic, but is commonplace among teens. At the other end of the spectrum, "self-expression" may seem trite when it takes the form of choosing virtual "wallpaper" for the background of a MySpace.com personal profile--Hawaiian print or psychedelic border?--but no one faults a new home buyer for poring over catalogues of paint and rug samples ad nauseam, and the basic impulse is the same. Welcome to the "Brave You World." Both examples point to the last term of the triad--"personalization." According to the study, personalization is the crucial pivot because it allows an individual to appropriate the symbols of a particular community while also adding personal, self-expressive touches. Thus, one's choice of cell phone ring, MP3 jacket, or music playlist can express devotion to a musician, a sport, a TV show, a movie, a food--literally anything--locating the user in a global subculture, but also distinguishing them from other members of that group. "They're really personalizing everything," observed Drath. "They love this new digital media opportunity because it allows them to be their own DJs, their own TV programmers--indeed, their own Web designers." The proliferation of brand names like Nike, iPod, and the Simpsons in this "Brave You World" is, of course, good news for advertisers--as is the study's finding that teens are not nearly as leery of advertising as earlier generations that usually claimed to despise it. Today's media-savvy teens, by contrast, seem to embrace ads--going out of their way to incorporate them into their expressions of identity--showing a confidence, perhaps, that they fully understand the "manipulative" ethos of advertising that their precursors might have found deceitful or underhanded (i.e., "totally fake"). "This generation really does value advertising, in terms of learning about new trends or the new products," agreed Michele Madansky, Yahoo! Vice President, Corporate and Sales Research. But advertisers also face new hurdles in reaching the newest generation of consumers. Personalization of technology allows teens to dodge certain types of advertising altogether--with radio, for example, suffering badly in comparison to online music programs that allow users to compile commercial-free playlists for use on personal MP3 players. In the same vein, advertisers widely acknowledge that the flexibility of Internet entertainment has seriously undermined television advertising. What's more, teens don't seem to think of their favorite portable devices--cell phones and MP3 players--as possible advertising platforms. "There's this paradox that we found," Madansky said, summarizing the findings. "The more personalized the medium becomes, the less receptive they currently are to advertising." Advertisers are also confronted with a generation of teens that is busier than its predecessors. "We asked about everything from sleeping, to eating, to spending time with their families, to consuming online media--and when you add up all the activities, you get a '44-hour' day," explained Madansky. "And the only way to do that is multi-tasking." Not surprisingly, the study found that teens typically engage in three or four other activities while using the Internet, and two or three while watching TV. The key to targeting these busy consumers in the midst of media proliferation is advertising that "engages" the viewer with interactive or highly personalized elements. This, of course, also calls for an adjusted metric for copy testing, which must now track different types of user response. "In the 50's and 60's, copy testing was mainly about recall--and then in the 70's and 80's, they were talking about persuasion, and in the 90's it was about liking--getting the consumer to like the advertisement," said Mike Hess, Director of Global Research and Communication Insights, OMD. "Now it's got to be about engagement." So what will engagement lead to, as far as the creative and logistical aspects of advertising? Hard to say. "We don't know what it looks like," admitted Madansky. "I don't think anyone has figured out how this is going to work. I think that's a challenge for us all in the coming years."
Talks that would have NBC Universal acquiring DreamWorks' film and TV fell through yesterday. The proposed $1 billion deal would have given Universal control of DreamWorks' live-action film studio, including a 60-title library. Negotiations didn't include its animation unit, which was spun off as a public company. DreamWorks would have given NBC's Universal Studios' division another movie unit for content--adding to Universal Pictures and its smaller film budget division, Focus Features. Having DreamWorks in its stable would also have funneled to Universal new movies from noted filmmaker and part owner of DreamWorks, Steven Spielberg. DreamWorks ended talks on the proposed $1 billion deal because of a disagreement about price specifics, according to executives. DreamWorks' senior executives also wanted to retain more creative control than NBC originally intended, according to executives. DreamWorks SKG and NBC Universal decided on a two-month negotiating period. DreamWorks--one of the last "mini" major independent movie studios--was founded in 1994. Big DreamWorks movies included "American Beauty" and "Gladiator." But in recent years, it has scaled back a number of businesses, including TV production.
The decision to allow Google to Webcast the new UPN TV show "Everybody Hates Chris" is part of an "experiment" to determine the best use of TV content on the Web, Larry Kramer, president of CBS Digital Media, said Tuesday at OMMA East in New York City. Google began hosting the show, ad-free, on Monday--and will continue to do so through Thursday. The point of the test, Kramer told the audience during his afternoon keynote address, is to determine how many people watch the show online and how much traffic is driven back to Viacom Web sites as a result of the broadcast. "It's just an experiment on our part to see what kind of viewership [the show] will get," Kramer said. "It will give us a basis for understanding, at first cut, what we have to do in the future ... to take TV and use it on the Web," he said. While the Webcasts are ad-free for now--"advertisers only pay for ads on the air," Kramer said--he added that the situation might change in the future. For instance, once Viacom gets an idea of how many consumers view shows online, the network might keep the TV ads in the online broadcasts and charge marketers for them. One possibility is that CBS will use data from the "Everybody Hates Chris" streams on Google to develop a rate card "that in some way understands what kind of traffic we're likely to get on a secondary showing," he said. "Everybody understands that this medium is changing, and we have to open the door," Kramer said. He also floated the idea that in the future, Viacom would make shows available ad-free online, but would charge visitors a small fee--$1, perhaps--to view them. This week's Google Webcasts are just one of the ways that CBS is exploring how to use the Internet. "We're creating all kinds of new programming only on the Web," Kramer said. For instance, Web sites now have features usually found on DVDs, such as interviews with the show's stars. Many shows also have blogs. For one new show, "Ghost Whisperer" -- about a woman who talks to dead people--the network is hosting a blog by co-executive producer and self-professed psychic James Van Praagh. "We're doing everything we can to try to extend the experience of what's going on," Kramer said. Kramer also discussed the network's efforts to post original news content online, including political reports and other news that the networks don't devote time to. "Correspondents are filing and updating throughout the day," he said, adding that the Web allows for "other areas of coverage that CBS has never been able to highlight before." In addition, he said, "news has become a loop," thanks to the immediate viewer feedback available online. "The story doesn't end any more when you post it, when you put it on the TV."