Yahoo will start a new video-sharing site through a partnership with Current TV, the cable network founded by former Vice President Al Gore. The Yahoo Current Network encompasses both professional and amateur videos aimed at 18- to-24-year-olds, and will debut with four channels on Yahoo Video. Current Buzz will feature segments highlighting popular Web stories, and will be produced by Madeleine Smithberg, co-creator and former executive producer of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." The other three channels will focus on sports, autos and travel, respectively. A total of eight channels are expected to be offered by the end of 2007. Each channel will carry one studio-produced segment and 8 to 10 user-created pieces each day. User-contributed videos will be filtered to screen out offensive material and edited to ensure a high level of editorial and technical quality, according to Jason Zajac, general manager for social media at Yahoo. He said the screening process should allay marketer concerns about advertising alongside user-created programming. In addition to 15- and 30-second video pre-roll ads, Yahoo is offering standard banners and sponsorship opportunities on the Yahoo Current Network. Zajac said the company is currently in talks with existing Yahoo and Current TV advertisers and expects to name advertisers for the new video network soon. He explained that some prospective advertisers are interested in creating their own viral video campaigns targeting Yahoo Current's youthful audience, while others favor more traditional branding spots. Sponsorships will initially be offered across all the site's channels as a package, but may also be limited to individual channels going forward, said Zajac. To date, Yahoo has watched as new social sites such as YouTube and MySpace.com have built huge, young audiences around Web video. Earlier this year, the company largely abandoned producing original video in favor of content partnerships with outside media companies such as Current TV. Current TV has a separate partnership with Google called Google Current, a program on the network that looks at searches people are conducting on Google. Started last year, Current TV is now in 30 million homes.
NYTimes.com Wednesday launched a new feature designed to make its articles more interactive. The offering, provided through a deal with Answers.com, allows online readers to get more information about any word in an article by pressing the "alt" key while clicking on that word. A new window then opens that provides either a dictionary or encyclopedia entry about the term. Answers.com's algorithm scans adjacent words for context to find the appropriate search result to return. For instance, the service would return different results for "apple" if the reference is to Apple the company rather than apple the fruit. NYTimes.com is the first company to license the Answers.com technology, said Robert Formentin, Answers.com's vice president of ad sales. He added that Answers.com is currently in discussions with other major publishers. The Times built the Answers.com feature into the NYTimes.com Web site, and the pop-up window that provides the information is hosted by the Times, and uses the same font as NYTimes.com--although the window also includes Answers.com branding. The pop-ups also include pay-per-click text link ads powered by Google, but none of that revenue is shared with Answers.com, said Formentin. He added that Answers.com views the deal as purely a traffic generator, but that future deals with other publishers may be structured differently.
In response to Yahoo's disclosure Tuesday of falling ad sales in autos and financial services, Merrill Lynch media analyst Lauren Rich Fine said that digital agencies aQuantive and Digitas--both covered by the brokerage house--also might face revenue challenges. aQuantive generates about 15 percent of marketing services revenue from financial services clients, and 9 percent from a category that includes car manufacturers. Merrill Lynch estimated that aQuantive's overall revenue exposure in those two categories is about 5 percent, but added that it's not clear the digital marketing company will see an impact. "It is difficult to know if [aQuantive] will be affected and whether they have any client overlap with Yahoo," the report stated, adding, "knowing that the company has a diversified client base, we are not yet jumping to conclusions." Digitas also has "significant exposure" because its two largest clients are GM, which accounts for 16 percent of revenue, and American Express, accounting for 25 percent, according to the report. Yahoo's CEO Terry Semel told investors at a Goldman Sachs conference Tuesday that it had seen soft ad sales in the auto and financial services categories for the last several weeks. The news sparked investors to send Yahoo stock down more than 11 percent, while the broader Nasdaq fell around 13 percent. The Merrill Lynch report called the news "quite concerning," but said it was difficult to know whether slower ad growth at Yahoo is due to overall industry trends or Yahoo's own market share loss.
The upcoming mid-term elections are already spurring U.S. adults to seek political information online, according to a new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Pew reported Wednesday that 26 million Americans, or 19 percent of adult Web users, said they went online for news or information about politics on a typical day in August. That proportion is comparable to the 18 percent of adult U.S. Web users that sought political information online in November of 2004, in the days leading up to the last presidential election. In July of 2002, just 11 million Americans--or 13 percent of Web users--said they got political information on the Web on a typical day. Pew proposed that increased broadband use was a major factor behind the increased reliance on the Web from 2002 to now. "Having a home broadband connection tends to draw users to the internet for their information needs," stated the report. Also, there's more high-quality political information available online now than four years ago. "More attractive internet content about politics--from established news organizations, campaigns, independent media, and interested citizens--may have drawn more users to the Web for this information," stated the report. For the study, Pew surveyed 1,021 adult Web users in August.
Today, MediaPost Communications presents our Online All Star awards in the creative field: Peter Kang, digital creative director, Saatchi & Saatchi LA; Kirk Drummond, vice president of creative and innovation, T3; and Hillary Evans, creative director-digital, Brand Buzz/Y&R Brands. All of our Online All Stars will be honored at a reception in New York on Sept. 25, the first day of OMMA Conference. Peter Kang Digital Creative Director, Saatchi & Saatchi LA Peter Kang has been known to walk into meetings at Saatchi & Saatchi LA with a video game player in his pocket. But Kang, the creative director of interactive and emerging technology, whose sole client is Toyota, isn't just playing--he's studying. "Gaming is this thing that kind of takes over the tool that most advertisers want to use, which is the television," Kang says. "I think you at least need to nod your head and show the consumer that you speak their language." The 33-year-old has a deep understanding of gamers and the way they want to be approached because he is one. This year, he helped design a multimedia campaign for the Toyota Yaris that incorporated gaming in almost every aspect, from "Yaris vs. Yaris" TV spots to Toyota's sponsorship of a major tournament. It included an industry first: an in-banner multiplayer game that Adobe now uses as a case study to demonstrate new ways to use Flash and other Macromedia applications. In a New York City arcade where Kang spent hours playing (rather than attending his graduate school art classes), he met Gene Na, a fellow "Street Fighter" enthusiast. Around the same time, Kang saw the PBS documentary, "Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires." "I called [Na] on the phone and said: 'Hey, do you know anything about this Internet thing?'" Kang recalls. Kang ditched his M.F.A. program, and he and Na cofounded a small Internet design firm called Kioken. The boutique company quickly earned a reputation for innovation and a laid-back atmosphere. The shop gave all new employees video game consoles. Kang and Na delved into Flash when it was still new, creating more useful, dynamic Web sites at a time when, Na says, most sites simply forced users to click from one page to another. The pair sold Kioken in 2001, but not before vowing to leverage their new skills to win positions at prestigious advertising agencies. "[Peter] understands the creative and the development part as well as the high-level business," Na says. "It's very easy to work with someone who understands the full picture." Kang and Na also produced a gaming documentary called "Bang the Machine." The contacts they made on that film turned into friends who today keep Kang up to date on gaming trends and developments. Not that he's sitting around all day waiting for tips. Kang sleeps just a couple of hours a night, waking early to read the 100 or so e-mails that pour in between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. At the Saatchi offices, he meets daily with the head of media and representatives from the strategy and planning teams, in addition to providing leadership in his own department. "Peter just blew us away when we first met him, and not just because of his digital marketing talent, but also due to his ability to come into this agency and inspire collaboration" across departments, says David Murphy, president of Saatchi & Saatchi LA. At night, Kang is online, catching up on marketing and automotive news, talking with friends, and working on new ideas, often until 4 a.m. Weekends find Kang at a racetrack in a bright yellow Lotus Elise. His love for cars and media makes his work a blend of passions. Toyota couldn't be happier. Gregg Benkendorfer, national manager of interactive communications, and Teri Hill, car advertising manager at Toyota, say Kang is brilliant but without a trace of ego. They value his drive to innovate. Toyota "has consumed my entire life," Kang says, but he's quite happy about it. "They're pretty much the only ones that can incorporate the kind of innovative ideas" Saatchi develops, Kang says. "And they expect it." Kang promises to unveil a "quantum leap" in Toyota advertising this winter. As for the future, he's thinking about teaching art. But don't expect him to be too hard on students who skip class. Kirk Drummond Vice President of Creative and Innovation, T3 When Kirk Drummond takes a vacation, he isn't one to casually sightsee in Paris or lounge on a beach in the Bahamas. Instead you'll find Drummond adventure-racing, a sport that has had him kayaking through crocodile-infested waters, traversing terrain crawling with vipers, and mountain biking down frighteningly steep slopes. "My joke is, when I come back from a vacation, I need a vacation," cracks Drummond, who is vice president of creative and innovation at T3 (The Think Tank), the Austin, Texas-based integrated marketing services agency. Truth be told, Drummond is seemingly tireless, according to Gay Gaddis, T3's president and founder, who has employed him for nearly five years. "Kirk is a very driven person," she says. "I've seen him burn the midnight oil too many times, but he's striving for perfection, and he wants his work to be the best it can be." A math major in college who once ran his own special-effects company, Drummond's efforts for T3 have lately included ExperienceMarriott, a Web site chock full of rich media applications designed to lure visitors to explore one of the hotel's newly redesigned rooms, and ChaseBlink, a Flash-rich Web site offering training in the on-the-go tap technique required to use Chase's next-generation credit cards. Drummond formulates his ideas and approaches through T3 Labs, an internal research and development group he leads that explores emerging technologies and platforms, and finds creative ways to exploit them for the benefit of clients. The experimentation and out-of-the-box thinking in which Drummond and his staff specialize enable T3 to be proactive with clients--assessing their needs and then pitching ideas, as opposed to waiting for briefs, points out John McGarry, T3's vice president of client services. Case in point: After conducting research earlier this year into how hotel chains were showcasing their rooms online, Drummond and his team saw that the Internet was overrun with humdrum virtual tours and lame photo galleries. Seeing an opportunity for Marriott, which is in the process of upgrading and modernizing its rooms, Drummond proposed and sold the hotel chain on the aforementioned ExperienceMarriott, a vibrant interactive site that enables visitors to tour a room and actually hone in on details that are important to them. For example, visitors can close blackout curtains, set an alarm clock, and turn on a shower, among other features--ultimately getting a real feel for the space. The investment in the Web site has paid off for Marriott. According to Tom Previ, Marriott's director of marketing communications, users are spending a significant amount of time--an average of eight or nine minutes--during visits, and their interests can be tracked. In addition, 74 percent of the visitors are potential new customers. While ExperienceMarriott is dazzling on a visual and technical level, Drummond is not one to flaunt whiz-bang technology just for the sake of it. "We definitely try to live by the rule that just because you can doesn't mean you should," Drummond observes. Nick Bomersbach, vice president and director of JC Penney direct technology and e-commerce. Internet marketing and direct for JC Penney, appreciates Drummond's restraint and his ability to gauge the multichannel retailer's needs. "The ideas he brings to the table for us are typically practical, and they have residual benefit to them. They're not one-shot wonders," Bomersbach says, citing JCPGifts.com. The holiday shopping-themed Web site Drummond produced for the retailer last holiday season was not only successful in converting browsers into paying customers, Bornersbach says, but remains active and can easily be redeployed for major shopping periods. Drummond is proud that he and his team find and implement approaches that truly meet each client's respective goals. As for upcoming projects, he teases that T3 "has some really interesting things in the queue." What about his planned exploits outside of work? "I'm getting into mountaineering," Drummond enthuses. "Mount Rainier and Kilimanjaro are on the short list." Hillary Evans Creative Director-Digital, Brand Buzz/Y&R Brands Hillary Evans was still in college when she landed a freelance gig designing Jolt Cola's first Web site in the early 1990s. "That was the soda that was popular with programmers because it has twice the caffeine of other sodas," she recalls with a laugh. While Evans labels the early effort, which featured rudimentary animation, "very dorky," she now produces much more sophisticated work for clients such as LG, Microsoft, and Sony in her position as creative director at BrandBuzz, a unit of Y&R where she has thrived for the last four years. One of the keys to Evans' success is her ability to generate ideas from consumers' point of view, according to BrandBuzz senior program manager Gwynne Gauntlett, who also worked with Evans at Razorfish. "She understands inherently that to effectively engage the target, you have to provide them with a meaningful interaction with the brand, ideally in a space where they are open to receiving the communication in the first place," Gauntlett says. When it came time to market the slim new clamshell CU500 phone to college students, LG had simply planned to seed the Internet with some cool videos that would get people talking about the phone, says Niels Aillaud, LG's electronic marketing manager. But Aillaud was ultimately sold on Evans' more ambitious desire to launch a CU500 page on MySpace this summer. While leveraging MySpace isn't a groundbreaking idea in itself, Evans was clever, devising a page that had two fictional college students--Lucy and Gavin--assigned to market the LG phone as a school project. The target demographic flocked to the page, which consisted mainly of videos created using the phone. According to Evans, Lucy and Gavin drew 20,000 friends in the first couple of weeks of the tie-in. And, notably, there wasn't any backlash--always a concern when marketers launch a program on MySpace. "There were comments on the board where one person would say, 'I hope you get an A on your marketing project,' and someone else would write, 'This is below-the-fold marketing. This isn't real!'" Evans shares. "Then after that someone would write, 'Obviously this isn't real, but it's really cool.'" The success of the initiative only confirmed Aillaud's faith in Evans. "I've had the pleasure of working with her for the last two years, and I don't even need to supervise her," Aillaud observes, adding: "She understands my vision." It comes as no surprise to BrandBuzz Executive Creative Director Graham Turner that clients such as Aillaud enjoy working with Evans, who combines technical know-how and creativity with an engaging personality. "Her demeanor is not what you tend to find in this space," Turner says. "She's less of a wired person; she's more normal and down-to-earth, not floating around in the ether." Lately this down-to-earth creative director had her feet firmly planted on the ground while working in concert with Y & R divisions on projects for Microsoft's Windows Live Messenger. These included the creation of "Big Monster Battle," which Evans hails as the first two-person fighting game in Messenger, and Mimic, a text filter through which Messenger users can adopt different text personas. So if you're typing a message and you switch on the Pirate filter, your text will be translated into Pirate-speak. Other Mimic offerings include Corporate Babble, Enlightened One, Pig Latin, and Izzle. Originally designed for the U.S., Mimic has been picked up in more than a dozen other markets and is fully localized--there are Mimic text filters available in Southeast Asia that are wildly different than what one might find in the U.K. or Australia. "Ideally, in the future, we would make some kind of toolkit that would allow programmers to make their own voices and submit them and put them up," Evans says. "More and more people are participating and creating things in the digital space if you give them the tools." Liz Tascio and Christine Champagne contributed to this report.
From polite banners and expandable ad units to newer creative executions like full-page video ads, rich media offers marketers tremendous potential for the marketing mix. A recent Kagan Research report forecasts rich media will be the fastest growing area of Internet advertising from 2006-2015, with the category having topped $1 billion in 2005. This expected growth is a continuing validation of rich media as a viable and effective way to reach audiences and build brands. Rich media has become astandard of online display advertising for companies in automotive, consumer goods, entertainment, financial services, healthcare and more, due to its unsurpassed delivery capabilities, flexibility and ROI. A Win-Win for Advertisers and Consumers In part, the popularity of rich media stems from its acceptance by users as an engaging, entertaining way to interact with brands--in stark contrast to the intrusive and invasive nature of interstitial ads like pop-ups. With rich media, publishers can provide cleaner online environments, enabling advertisers to engage with the consumer based on his or her level of interest in seeing the content. Rich media has also proven to generate much higher CTRs than static online advertising. However, the value of rich media exposures for advertisers extends beyond just CTRs, because rich media allows users to interact with the brand via the ad unit--without having to leave a given Web site. Data and reporting on this interaction paint a robust picture on the back end that gives marketers intelligence to optimize the impact of their online campaigns. An Integrated Digital Solution Delivers Optimal Results Advertisers and marketers may still wonder how to best leverage rich media in their digital media mix. Consider the following tips carefully. Use a single, centralized source for campaign management. Today's ad campaigns are multichannel, multimedia and span geographical boundaries, making them more complicated than ever. Choosing the right integrated tools to help create, serve and manage multiple campaigns in real time, on a global scale, can mean the key to successful marketing integration. From creating and serving ads to tracking performance, a solution should provide creative flexibility, support multiple formats and allow access to a broad spectrum of publishers. A process that combines the ability to quickly and easily create ads and preview them to gain client and publisher approvals should be a standard offering, as should comprehensive reporting and expert client service to help navigate the technical landscape involved in campaign management Flexibility. Whether a marketer is tech-savvy or needs a turnkey approach, it's ideal to look for a partner that can provide flexible tools that add up to a comprehensive, best-in-breed solution. Also look for a partner that understands the industry and anticipates changes proactively. The Future of Rich Media Rich media has seen an exciting growth period but has an even more exciting future. As media companies continue to roll out online-only content, there is tremendous potential for video advertising in multiple formats. Video enables advertisers to repurpose their broadcast assets, providing far more functionality and a rich, detailed picture of marketing effectiveness. Other directions for the future include integrating search with display, incorporating rich media on mobile devices and handhelds and in-game advertising. Certain priorities, however, should stay constant. As in the offline world, effective campaigns are all about knowing where users are and how to reach and engage them. The difference in the online world is fully understanding capabilities of technologies like rich media that can bring creative to life and help achieve the objectives and goals of any given marketing campaign.