In a freewheeling conversation that touched on everything from the role of ad agencies and the adoption of programmatic media-buying systems to the emergence of new forms of data for targeting consumers that could become new forms of currency for trading with media, MasterCard media chief Ben Jankowski said while traditional media-buying values have not been abandoned by big marketers, they no longer are the dominant reasons they choose the media they do. “The CPM is not dead,” Jankowski said during a conversation with Simulmedia Founder and CEO Dave Morgan during one of its monthly “salons” in New York Thursday evening. While CPMs -- or cost-per-thousands -- used to be “the only thing we looked at, now it’s one of five things we look at,” Jankowski said, implying media valuation systems are still in flux, but are evolving rapidly as marketers find better ways of using data to define and target their audiences and measure the results based on actual business results, not just impressions-based metrics like reach and frequency. “We are still looking at CPMs and things like that, but the more we can connect our business results -- that’s going to be the currency,” Jankowski said in response to a question from audience member Doug Ray, CEO of Carat, which is also one of MasterCard’s agencies. Specifically, Ray asked whether the shift toward more sophisticated audience data and the adoption to programmatic media-buying systems was giving marketers like MasterCard the “ability to target audiences, as opposed to targeting content, and hoping the audiences are there.” Citing the “hold” that things like Nielsen audience ratings have on the ad industry’s media currency, Ray asked Jankowski whether the ability to target audiences directly might change that. While not identifying Nielsen by name, Jankowski acknowledged that big marketers like MasterCard are beginning to shift their reliance from the kinds of audience estimates it produces. Responding to another audience question from The Daily Meal Founder Jim Spanfeller, Jankowski said the trend is toward using dynamic, real-time data to measure brand impact with specific groups of consumers, not classic demographic ratings segments. “We can get a lot more granular about brand health targets,” he said, adding that data is enabling brands to measure their performance with explicit types of audiences based on their actual consumer lifestyles vs. demographic surrogates. “Before it was a big, giant cumbersome study that went out into the field once a year, and now it’s much more dynamic and I can be actionable in a quicker period of time,” he said. Aside from the emergence and adoption of better forms of consumer data targeting, much of the conversation focused on the shift toward programmatic media-buying systems. Jankowski, who leads the programmatic committee at the World Advertising Federation, noted that the trade organization released a white paper Thursday to help marketers deal with the somewhat daunting task of understanding the programmatic “ecosystem” and how they can adopt it. He acknowledged it is complex and complicated, and admitted that LUMA Partners’ infamous Lumascapes charts keep him “awake at night,” but he said programmatic media-buying is here to stay and will likely grow as a critical part of marketers’ media-buying, because it is efficient, effective and enables brands to leverage data to target audiences in a way that traditional media-buying based on audience estimates never could. That said, he said his “biggest a-ha” reaction to the WFA’s study was the fact that so many big brands are still putting their “head in the sand and waiting for people to figure this out.” “People spend way less time with it than they should,” he said. Asked whether fear-mongering from some big media agencies and ad tech players that programmatic media-buying is rife with fraud and non-viewable traffic was casting a pall on it in the eyes of big marketers, Jankowski said, “I don’t.” Contrary to some industry pundits, Jankowski said he doesn’t believe big marketers are putting a “black X next to it,” but he said they do “need to figure out how to manage in the ecosystem.” Programmatic will continue to grow in size in the marketplace,” he asserted, describing the issues raised by critics more as “speed bumps” than “barriers.” 4As honcho Mike Donahue probed Jankowski on one of those potential speed bumps -- the issue of “transparency” among agencies and trading desks that arbitrage programmatic buys for their clients -- and Jankowski more or less demurred, noting that while “virtually nobody would say, ‘Yeah, I don’t care about transparency,” he noted that “there are a lot of layers between that.” Overall, Jankowski -- a long-time agency media executive before joining MasterCard four years ago -- said he was bullish on the relationships between marketers and their agencies, and while he acknowledged that marketers have been pressuring agencies on compensation and performance, he believes agencies are changing and adapting, shifting from a mindset in which they have to “control everything” to one in which they are more of an “orchestrator.” “That’s one of the ways they can create more value,” he said.
The amount of pre-roll video inventory available for programmatic buying increased 14% from Q1 to Q2 2014, and much of that growth was driven by high-end publishers getting on board with programmatic selling. The data comes from TubeMogul’s Q2 2014 quarterly update on the U.S. digital video ad marketplace. Per TubeMogul’s report, the amount of inventory available for real-time bidding (RTB) from “Tier” 1 publishers and comScore Top 100 sites increased by 48% and 65%, respectively. That’s down from the respective growth figures of 110% and 78% posted in between Q4 2013 and Q1 2014 -- but it still represents a clear upward trend. Private marketplace use continues to surge, with 140% more advertisers buying inventory directly from publishers via TubeMogul’s BrandAccess (its private marketplace service). The use of BrandAccess has grown 1,500% since Q4 2013, which TubeMogul calls “astonishing.” Another area of exceptional growth is mobile video. TubeMogul says the amount of mobile video available for programmatic buying in the U.S. has increased by over 1,000% in the past nine months, attributing the growth to “the addition of several major exchanges.” A TubeMogul representative acknowledged that the addition of mobile inventory sources skews the numbers, and that “while [TubeMogul] did enjoy some growth, it’s not 100% representative,” adding that it should “stabilize next quarter.” While viewability rates for inventory purchased direct from publishers increased 39% (up to 77%) quarter-over-quarter, TubeMogul notes that the overall viewability rates were nearly identical to Q1 2014 -- checking in at an abysmal 30%, just 1% better than the previous quarter. The lack of overall improvement on the viewability front was highlighted in a report form video ad management firm Vindico earlier this week. How the Media Rating Council (MRC) now-implemented standard of “50% of the video ad being in-view for at least two seconds” changes the pictures remains to be seen. The cost to buy pre-roll video inventory increased 13% quarter-over-quarter, with all types of inventory -- from “premium” to “remnant” -- becoming at least 10% more expensive in Q2.
Two days after announcing a startling plan to introduce mathematical modeling to estimate nearly half the viewing in its national TV audience sample, a top Nielsen executive overseeing the initiative spoke with MediaDailyNews to set the record straight, clarifying that the method will not be included into its official ratings until clients have had time to review its impact and approve it. “We need client acceptance for us to roll out this methodology,” Farshad Family, senior vice president-local product leadership, said in response to an MDN report that Nielsen might include the new method effective with the new TV season. Family said the method was one part of a broader plan to expand Nielsen’s national TV audience sample, another part -- the rollout of new people meter households -- will begin to impact official TV ratings beginning Sept. 29. Family said about 400 new people meter homes would be added to the sample effective with that date, and another 1,800 would be added to the national sample over the next two quarters. He said that plan, as well as the new modeling method -- which Nielsen calls a “viewer assignment methodology” -- have been communicated to some clients, as well as industry watchdog the Media Rating Council, since 2013. But some Nielsen clients said they were surprised by the mathematical modeling component of the plan, and Family acknowledged that Nielsen may not have communicated it to all of its clients until it sent an official communication to clients on Wednesday. Family said the clients that had previously been informed were mainly the ones who “actively participate” in MRC meetings. He also said Nielsen still has work to do with the MRC to convince the self-regulatory industry body that the new method passes muster and merits accreditation, but he said Nielsen executives are confident about the plan. “We’re fairly confident in the approach and the methodology that we developed, however, we still need to demonstrate that with our clients,” he said. Despite that confidence, Family acknowledged that the plan is complex and complicated, and said he needed to check with Nielsen’s “scientists” on several questions posed by MDN, including exactly how Nielsen can “double” the “effective size” of its national TV ratings sample by modeling demographic data from its national people meters to thousands of local TV set meters dispersed around the country. Nielsen’s national people meter sample currently is nearly 25,000 households. Some of the increase will come from the 2,200 new people meters it will add to the national sample. The balance will come from modeling 13,000 local TV set meters and mathematically modeling viewing behavior from the national people meters to them. Asked how 13,000 set meters could contribute to doubling the size of a panel that is currently nearly 25,000, Family explained it was due to “weighting” and the fact that some homes have more weight than other homes, and that it works out mathematically. While the method may be mathematically scientific, it represents a huge shift for some Nielsen clients, because national TV ratings historically have been based on a sample of actual viewers, not modeled viewing behavior. In addition to the national TV sample expansion plan, Family said Nielsen also announced an expansion of its local TV ratings sample to local TV ratings clients this week. That plan does not involve and mathematical modeling and strictly involves the rollout of more metered households. That plan, he said, will add a total of 3,600 more local people meter households over the next two years. “This is a big investment Nielsen is making,” he said, adding, “we’re committed to this.”
A weak TV upfront ad market is not worrying TV network executives. Speaking at the Nomura Digital Media Conference in New York, media selling executives said a weak-performing upfront TV ad market -- where broadcast networks witnessed nearly an 8% reduction in advertising dollars to $8.45 billion, and where cable networks dipped almost 5% to $9.68 billion -- is not a concern. “If you have the content, the dollars always follow,” says Joe Ianniello, chief operating officer of CBS Corp. “Whether people shift from upfront to scatter, it doesn’t matter to us because we have confidence in our schedule.” Ianniello reiterated what many media analysts are projecting -- that TV’s quarter-by-quarter scatter advertising markets will be stronger than in recent periods: “The third quarter should be better than the second, and the fourth quarter is going to be better than the third.” CBS’ Ianniello also notes CBS has sold around 80% of its inventory in its new “Thursday Night Football” package from the NFL, which will start this month. At the same Nomura event, Andrew Warren, chief financial officer of Discovery Communications, tempered the characterization of the “weak” TV upfront market: “It was more ‘soft’ than ‘weak’,” he said. “Traditionally, we sell around 50% of our inventory in the upfront, and we did around 50%. We took a little less volume at good prices. It was really more about preserving price... For us, we’ve always had success in the scatter market.” Growing cable network group AMC Networks sees itself a bit differently than bigger TV advertising selling companies. With regard to the upfront, Sean Sullivan, executive vice president/ CFO of AMC Networks, said: “We don’t necessarily view ourselves as the market... We saw very good CPM growth and double-digit growth in terms of volume. We are very please with how we did in the upfront.” That said, Sullivan said some TV advertisers/categories did shift some dollars to digital or “for more flexibility in the scatter market." He added: "We have historically done well in the scatter market.” Although there has been some movement of dollars to digital, Sullivan doesn’t believe this will have a significant impact for AMC Networks currently.
The median age of the U.S. TV viewer is rising faster than the median age of the average American. The median TV age for the 2013-2014 season is now 44.4 years, up 6.5% -- or 3.5 years higher than it was during the 2009-2010 TV season, when it was 41.9. In 2014, the estimated U.S. population median age was 37.6 -- up 1%, or 0.4 years from the 37.2 years that the 2010 U.S. Census shows. This was 5% higher -- or 1.9 years -- from 35.3 in the 2000 Census. According to MoffettNathanson Research, who provided the study: “We think the shift in demographic viewing behavior is caused by a combination of factors ranging from lower penetration rates of under 25 year old households to increasing use of time-shifting technologies in most under 55 year old households.” For the four big English-language broadcast networks, the weighted average age of TV viewers grew 7% to 53.9 from 50.3; for the cable networks, it increased 8% from 37.1 to 40. Among the big broadcast networks, Fox is still the youngest, at 47.8 years -- up 7% -- in the ratings weighted average age. At the other end of the spectrum, CBS is now at 58.7 years up 6%. ABC and NBC, however, are gaining on CBS -- now with ABC at 56.3 years and NBC 55.9, both up 6% from five years ago. Oldest cable networks for average viewer age: Fox News, Hallmark, and RFD-TV are now all at 65 years-plus; Fox Business is at 64.9 years; GSN, 63.0 years; Golf Channel, 61.9 years; and CNN, 61.9 years. Cable networks have aged the most rapidly: BET (8.8 years older); GAC (8.6 years); Mun2 (8.2 years); TVGN (7.9 years); MLB (7.7 years); and Golf Channel (7.1 years). Some cable networks became younger. Those include FXX, down 6.7 years (it recently transitioned from the Fox Soccer Channel); truTV, 4.1 years younger; AMC, also down 4.1 years. Interestingly, CNN also became slightly younger -- 1.5 years -- during the 2013-2014 season versus five years ago.
BPN, the IPG Mediabrands media agency, has appointed Martha Peterson SVP, managing director for the U.S., a new position at the shop. She joins the agency from WPP’s Maxus, part of GroupM, where she served as senior partner, global account director. Peterson will be responsible for leading the planning and strategy for BPN’s growing roster of U.S. clients including Hillshire Brands, Six Flags, Applebee’s and Subaru. She will work in partnership with all North American account leads to integrate context planning and digital-first strategies into core media client offerings. Peterson will also work closely with the new business, product and human resources teams, according to the agency. With over 20 years’ experience in client service, strategy, planning and investment, Peterson has worked on a number of high-profile accounts including Chanel, Colgate-Palmolive, Ford, Kraft, UPS and Xerox. At Maxus, she led the digital transformation for multiple clients deploying a data-driven content approach. Prior to Maxus, Peterson spent three years at Omnicom’s PHD. Earlier, she spent more than 10 years at WPP’s Y&R/MEC in a variety of global roles including managing partner of global solutions, group director of key corporate accounts in Europe and managing director of the Nordic Region. Peterson will be based in New York, reporting to Liz Ross, president, North America, BPN. “Martha will be a huge asset to the BPN team, as we continue to evolve and grow within the U.S.,” said Ross. “Her progressive thinking and wealth of knowledge aligns with our Radical Common Sense approach.”
IPG has taken a minority stake in Seattle-based mobile attribution firm Placed, the holding company confirmed Thursday. Placed specializes in measuring the impact of mobile advertisements on in-store visits. The two firms are characterizing the deal as a strategic partnership. The IPG Media Lab will oversee the company's relationship with Placed, which includes introducing IPG clients to Placed's services. Three non-equity Placed partners were also disclosed today including Collective, dstillery and SessionM. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, although The Wall Street Journal reported today that Placed has raised a total of $13 million to date. Placed’s measurement offering includes location-driven insights, targeting and attribution. All three services are derived from what Placed says is the largest opt-in consumer location panel in North America, measuring the location of nearly a quarter of a million devices daily as consumers visit brick-and-mortar stores. The company's research enables agencies and brands to better understand customer traffic patterns influenced by mobile ads, and to tailor relevant communications accordingly. That research is critical as mobile advertising ramps up. Mobile ad expenditures will nearly double this year to $18 billion, according to eMarketer. "IPG is committed to investing in and working with companies that are changing our industry and making our clients and agencies smarter,” said IPG CEO Michael Roth. “Placed is at the forefront of leveraging data to help our agencies see where we're moving the needle on a client's business."
Mental Floss Scores With Online Video As media consumption habits continue to evolve, magazine publishers big and small are embracing online video to stay relevant in a media landscape increasingly dominated by sight, sound and motion. One of the unexpected winners is trivia and knowledge magazine Mental Floss, according to The New York Times, which noted the quirky title’s success with a series of online videos hosted by John Green, author and YouTube star. (Disclosure: the author also writes for Mental Floss). Green’s rise to stardom is a phenomenon in its own right: a self-proclaimed “nerdfighter,” he achieved fame with “The Fault In Our Stars,” a young adult novel about two teenagers with cancer that was a runaway bestseller before being turned into a tearjerker movie released this summer. The book inspired a fanatical following among readers -- especially teenage girls, who in turn focused their affections on the boyish Green. Green had written for Mental Floss earlier in his career as an aspiring author. After he catapulted to fame, the publisher, owned by Dennis Publishing, contacted him about producing a series of online videos focused on trivia. In the segments, which typically run eight minutes long, Green expounds intriguing tidbits in rapid-fire fashion, covering subjects like “26 Amusing Facts About Amusement Parks,” “25 Famous People Who Were Once Interns,” “33 Amazing Toy Facts,” “50 Common Misconceptions,” and “20 Misconceptions About Sex.” The NYT notes that Green’s fan base has helped turn the short videos into big business for Mental Floss, racking up a total of over 81 million views since the first video was posted in February 2013, citing figures from Visible Measures. That, in turn, has attracted advertisers including Lexus, Geico, and Dos Equis, which now account for around 5% of the company’s total revenues. Sports Illustrated Show Comes To Net2TV Another big magazine publisher is turning to Net2TV for video distribution. This week, Time Inc. announced the premiere of “Sports Illustrated,” a weekly, half-hour feature program distributed via Net2TV’s free, ad-supported Portico TV service. The show, hosted by Maggie Gray, offers features, behind-the-scenes sports stories and in-depth analysis of sporting news. According to the companies, Portico TV reaches over 30 million screens including smart TVs from Samsung, LG, Sharp and Philips, Roku-connected TVs, and Toshiba tablets and notebooks. The show is also available online at www.portico.tv. Last week Meredith Corp. announced that it is partnering with Net2TV to launch a new streaming on-demand TV show, based on the Better Homes and Gardens brand. The new 30-minute program, which premiered August 27, will air twice a month and is available to viewers with Internet-connected televisions. Sanders Named Condé Nast President Of Global Development Gina Sanders has been named president of global development by Condé Nast. In this newly created role, Sanders will work with current and prospective partners around the world to create new business opportunities. Sanders will maintain offices in both New York and Paris. She previously served as president and CEO of Fairchild Fashion Media, which Condé Nast just sold to Penske Media Corporation last month. Before that, she served as vice-president and publisher of Lucky, and was the founding vice-president and publisher of Teen Vogue, among other positions. Howlett Tapped As CRO, TV Guide Magazine Grayle Howlett has been named chief revenue officer for TV Guide Magazine/OpenGate Media Group, with responsibility for all advertising revenue across print, digital, event and partnership platforms, the company announced this week. Before joining the OpenGate Media Group, Howlett served as group publisher at the North American Media Group, overseeing a number of publications, including The History Channel Magazine. Before that, he served as president of Blackbook Media and publisher of both Radar and Tracks.
Music streaming platform Rdio is launching a new free, ad-supported radio service as part of its updated app, which also offers subscribers more listening options. The new, free radio service -- launched with ad sales support from Rdio investor Cumulus -- offers access to programmed stations across a range of categories, with no need for a trial or subscription, including stations based on algorithmic analysis of artist and genres, curated stations programmed by professional DJs and personalized stations with programming choices made by the listener, among other options. The free stations are launching with exclusive launch support from Macy’s and Home Depot, including audio ads synced with display ads for Web and mobile; the sponsors are also creating branded stations, giving them full control of ad messaging. The updated app offers subscribers new listening options for on-demand listening, including playlists, albums and songs. It centers on a “Home” page featuring a frequently updated feed of personalized music “stories,” based on the listener’s music preferences, recent activity from friends and tastemakers, and recommendations from Rdio experts. There’s also a “Favorites” feature where listeners can keep track of their recent listening, a browsing function for the new curated stations and a trending feature showing what’s popular now. In June, Rdio acquired TastemakerX, a music discovery and curation service that enables listeners to discover new music, build and listen to virtual collections, and view artists based on social discovery. And last September, Cumulus took a stake in Rdio’s parent company, Pulser Media, in exchange for exclusive content, media and on-air promotional commitments over a five-year period. Under the terms of the deal, Rdio also gains access to Cumulus’ ad sales personnel to monetize ad-supported free products. There is plenty of activity elsewhere in the digital radio universe. Also this week, Triton Digital unveiled its new Triton Advertising Platform, which helps digital audio publishers monetize their audiences for both live and on-demand streaming audio. According to Triton, a number of big clients are already using the platform, including Cumulus and Rdio, among others.
More options and lower prices are fueling a rapid adoption of streaming media players throughout the United States. According to The NPD Group, 6 million U.S. households have added streaming media players (such as Roku, Apple TV, or Chromecast) in their homes, increasing ownership penetration to 17%. By 2017, nearly two of every five homes in the U.S. will have a streaming media player. Three factors are driving the rapid adoption: more selection, lower prices and better apps facilitating an ease of use, Buffone says. In the past year, both Google and Amazon introduced streaming media devices, and both were offered at attractive prices. (Google’s Chromecast was only $35, for instance. Roku quickly followed with its own HDMI stick at $49.) The average price of a streaming media player dropped from $88 in 2012 to $61 in the first half of 2014, according to NPD’s Retail Tracking Service. “Affordability can drive impulse buying, rapid increases in ownership, and in turn it is increasing the number of homes with access to apps on TV,” says John Buffone, executive director of NPD Connected Intelligence. “It’s quickly becoming a great new channel content owners can use to grow the audience for popular TV shows, movies and more.” Based on a survey of more than 5,000 U.S. consumers surveyed in the second quarter of 2014, AppleTV continues to lead market share, with 39% (down from 46% in the same period a year previously). Roku followed with 28% (down from 33%) and Google had 16% share. Amazon’s FireTV hadn’t launched at the time of the survey and was not included in the data, Buffone says. Given the strength of those four brands, however, it will be difficult for any other players to break into the market at this point, Buffone says. Despite the availability of Internet-content via connected television, the market should continue to expand for these four players for the next few years. “At this juncture there appears to be enough space to handle both devices in the market,” Buffone tells Marketing Daily, although he notes that by 2018, the external streaming market will likely hit its saturation point.
Vevo on Thursday named David Rice to the new post of chief product officer. Reporting directly to Vevo President/CEO Rio Caraeff, Rice will oversee product development for the music video platform. Rice most recently served as senior vice president and GM of CBS Interactive’s Games Division, where he managed GameSpot, GameFAQs, GiantBomb and ComicVine. Prior to CBS Interactive, Rice worked at Yahoo from 2010 through 2012. As vice president of media properties at the portal, he was credited with relaunching its Sports, News, Finance, Homepage and Entertainment properties, along with several new properties, including Yahoo Screen. This past year, it was widely reported that Vevo’s co-owners -- including Vivendi SA’s Universal Music Group, Sony's Sony Music Entertainment, Google and Abu Dhabi Media -- were preparing to sell the site. Then, in April, the New York Post reported that the owners had decided to take the property off the market in light of stronger-than-expected growth. In June, however, The Information reported that discussions to sell Vevo were still ongoing. Potential buyers are said to include DreamWorks Animation SKG, Liberty Media and a joint venture owned by AT&T and Chernin Group. Worldwide, Vevo recorded nearly 7 billion video views in June, according to internal estimates. Also according to the venture, its TV apps have experienced 196% growth in streams year over-year, with viewers spending an average 133 minutes watching 40 videos per month. Gearing up for a solo mission or gussying itself up for a sale, Vevo has been forging partnerships left and right. Last month, Vevo partnered with Pinterest to add a “Pin It” button to the sharing options featured alongside all videos on Vevo.com and its iOS apps. Per the pact, Vevo’s music videos can now be freely shared among Pinterest users. Pre-roll ads, which run through Vevo’s player, are also appearing in videos pinned on Pinterest. In May, Vevo tapped the native ad specialists at Mirriad to mix brand messages into music videos. Expanding on their Amplify partnership, Vevo also recently began working with Twitter on “Certified CountUps” -- an initiative to embed videos into targeted tweets from Vevo, brands, artists and fans. Earlier this year, Vevo announced a program for video premieres with AT&T, which consists of the carrier's brand being integrated into a series of video premieres from top artists. Among other programming initiatives, Vevo has been investing additional resources into its flagship property “Certified.” Vevo plans to debut en event slate dubbed “Certified Live” this fall, which will include two yet-to-be-named performers. The network expects the show to translate to about 80 pieces of content, including user-generated video and 10 songs from each performer. Neither Rice or any Vevo executives were free to discuss the appointment by press time.
AdExchanger this week posted a Q&A with About.com’s CEO Neil Vogel and Scott Mulqueen, director of programmatic and audience strategy, on programmatic and native advertising. Vogel said: “When we started, every single unit we sold programmatically was put into an exchange or bought in an open auction. We don’t do anything now in an open, no-floor ‘buy whatever you want’ auction. Scott’s done an incredible job of building a programmatic stack and effort that works really close to premium display and just serves clients who just want to talk to [About.com].”
OMMA magazine is seeking submissions for its 2014 All Stars recognizing individual industry executives who excel in three categories Media (agency), Creative (agency) and Marketing (client). If you’d like to nominate someone please contact joe@mediapost.com. Past inductees can be seen here.
On the surface, the idea of stealing the naked photos of young female celebrities and releasing them over the Interwebs is so culturally titillating and click-bait-y that the jokes just write themselves. The New York Daily News proclaimed the unveiling of the massive photo hacking scandal as “Bad Nudes for us All!,” and called it a “Flesh Mob!” The New York Post issued a “Nudes Flash.” And not surprisingly, Stephen Colbert was a scold: “This is why we can’t have nice things, Internet!” While using his own coverage, titled “The Invasion of Boobistan,” to make body-part and selfie jokes, he also pointed out the inherent hypocrisy in doing so: “I stand with the Huffington Post, which posted a searing op-ed shaming anyone who looked at or shared these photos. So do not -- I mean this -- do not go look at these photos,” Colbert said. “You don’t need to. Instead, check out all the sideboob and nip slips on HuffPost’s actual sideboob page.” He makes a great point. In our hypersexualized culture, in which a celeb like Kim Kardashian has made her career on an “accidental” release of a sex tape (and some say her “momager” mother sold her out) there’s such hypocrisy and contradiction around the issue of women and sexuality that it’s hard to keep up. Certainly, by the XXX standards of the images that are readily available on the Internet, these photos are hardly shocking or revelatory. And they’re of celebrities, who sell themselves sexually on screen and when they’re promoting a project. So the thinking goes, “Isn’t this just part of the territory? Who cares?” The easiest, most knee-jerk response to the hack was to play the fault-within-our-stars blame game. It goes along the lines of, “What idiots! Who would take these photos in the first place and actually store them? They deserve it! They should have been more responsible!” The best short answer comes from Farhad Manjoo, a tech journalist, who decimates that thinking pretty quickly. “I’ve never heard anyone respond to financial hacking by saying, Just don’t use online banking. That’s what you get for using credit cards,” he tweeted. Indeed, the whole mess is a gross invasion of privacy, and outright theft, just as stealing your online credit card identity would be. Many of the victims said they had (or thought they had) deleted the images from their phones or computers. Among other things, we’ve learned that “the cloud” has been given a genius name, conjuring up the celestial cumulo-numbii Zip code where the angels hang out and string harps. The reality is more like storage hell, a squalid place where meth addicts are constantly trying to break into your locker. No matter how holier-than-thou we may feel about this particular “Celebgate,” as it’s been dubbed for PG audiences, we are all as vulnerable. We all have information or images floating around in the tech ether that we wouldn’t want stolen and disseminated publicly, for everyone to use and see. Even more upsetting, “The Fappening,” (which unlike Celebgate, is the hands-down gross-outest name for the event -- Google it) has also sparked a massive dump on women. Within a few hours of the photo leak, there was a Jennifer Lawrence “slut” meme created. Many of the slurs exchanged against these victims on Reddit (some of whom were underage when the photos were taken) would make any of us want to retch. So does the growing online culture of “revenge porn,” in which an ex posts embarrassing pictures on the Web as payback for a break-up or relationship problems, real or imagined. These are photos of ordinary women and teenaged girls. Celebrity is not required -- only a naked human body. This is serious business, which really highlights the pervasive black-ops underbelly of the Internet, run by hacker sociopaths who engage with each other on sites like 4chan.org. That’s a vast web of message boards on which users post images of everything from their favorite actors to, and I’m not making this up, their favorite bowel movements. It’s a festival of the grotesque, and allegedly, the (mostly male) hackers collected these celebrity images in bits and pieces and spent months trying to “score.” These ethically and soul-dead creeps aren’t looking for financial reward; instead, their rituals are more akin to scalpers bragging to each other about their collection of human heads, awash in a toxic stew of resentment and entitlement. “Enough with your PC bullshit. It’s tired,” I was told by one of my Facebook friends, a successful man with teenaged daughters, after I disagreed with his post, which he saw as comic and outrageous. After pointing out what morons these stars are, he offered the 24-year-old JLaw some pretty graphic grooming advice for her “special area.” And lots of people hooted and LOLed on the thread. One of them responded to me with an insult that I won’t repeat, but it had to do with tightening up private parts. I would hope that Celebgate outrage is not only not tired, but intensifying, just like the Internet theft invasion-of-privacy problem. It’s funny that many brands have now been offering messages to young women on being strong and unapologetic, based on research that shows that their confidence drops tremendously after puberty. Well, stuff like this is a factor. How we talk about girls and women matters. Please remember your humanity. And to amend a famous advertising phrase, that idiot could be your wife or daughter.
First, let me be clear. Big data is not a shiny new toy...not the digital flavor du jour. That said, with Big Data, I think there is a lot less there than meets the eye. Big D is about "that"...that users did this...that users behaved in such and such a way. Big Data is not about the "why"...why did users do this, behave like that? To answer those questions, marketers and agencies need to start much earlier in the data chain. They need to plumb the depths of consumer behavior and transactions that marketers have about their power users...not the 20-80 rule...rather the 6-60 rule.The 6% of brand users who account for 60% of the brand's profitable volume that marketers get from minimally subsidizing sales vs. maximally subsidizing sales via trade promotions that often never reach consumers. These power users have discernible profiles and measurable affinities. When marketers share these power user data with agencies, that information can inform creative briefs that lead to messaging which drives sales...big time. Compared to algorithmic driven big data, the data that informs power usage of brands is "power" data. When you combine brand power data with media behavioral big data, you get something really great. You get "smart" data...and in this world of exponentially increasing data points, we all need to get smarter.
It’s pretty hard to feel sorry for women who make a living out of wearing revealing, often suggestive, clothing on-screen and red carpets -- using their natural (mostly) assets to attract attention and build their careers -- when someone hacks into cloud storage and publishes pictures of what little hasn't been publicly revealed before. In fact, this might have made household names out of a few budding starlets who couldn't have paid for better publicity. One complained on social media that they were "private pictures" taken by her husband. For what? To remind himself what his wife looks like naked during those long lonely hours driving a truck or writing code? All he has to do is look up when she's running from the shower to the dressing room (or keep the lights on during sex). If I told my wife I wanted to take nude photos of her, I'd be sleeping in the backyard in a pup tent for the next month or two. And what exactly is the point of taking those gynecological close-ups? I don't think any of the women hacked had significant others deployed overseas, where such a photo might help remind him what he is fighting for. In a February column I wrote that when you knowingly pose for a nude photo, you are naive to expect that it will remain private for the rest of your life. How many times have angry boyfriends/husbands dumped nude photos of their exes on the Web, after swearing to god that they never would? How many nude SnapChat pix have been shared in that 10 seconds before they disappear (or more accurately, go into cloud storage)? Millions, if not billions. Is hacking cloud storage the moral equivalent of breaking and entering? Absolutely. Should someone be prosecuted? Without question. Will it happen again and again? Count on it. The mere fact that you decided to pose for such photos puts you somewhat at fault. It’s hard to crash Web sites with pics of you and the kids walking the dogs down by the lake. But not everyone agrees. The New York Times' Farhad Manjoo tweeted: " I’ve never heard anyone respond to financial hacking by saying, Just don’t use online banking. That’s what you get for using credit cards." When, in fact, that is exactly what people say to reporters all the time after such hacks: "I am dumping my credit cards and using only cash." Are there any real victims? Yes. Although Erin Andrews was clearly hired for her buxom looks as much as her sports acumen, someone stalked her and took nude video of her through a hole in the wall. That was a crime. The guy who did it eventually went to jail. But what about the paparazzi who caught The Duchess of Cambridge sunbathing topless with the future King of England? Was that a criminal invasion of privacy or just the usual Fleet Street idea of "news"? In neither of these cases were the victims posing for nude photos, which were taken without their knowledge or permission. Quite different from what we saw over the weekend. Is it a compete defense to say, "Well, she has a RIGHT to be topless outside, and an expectation that no one is camera-peeping"? To which one might respond, "You are a public figure. People will pay good money to see your naughty bits. Behave accordingly." As Dear Abby used to say, "The only safe contraceptive is a pillow between your knees."