Warner Music Group will install video players on the Web sites of its labels, including Atlantic, Elektra and Bad Boy, and its recording artists, through a partnership announced Wednesday with Internet video company Brightcove. The Web-based players will encompass music videos, artist interviews, live performances and "behind-the-scenes" material. Through the deal, Warner will also allow bloggers, social networking sites and other Web publishers to add its video on-demand service to their sites. Sites that syndicate the Warner video programming will be able to share in ad revenue. Brightcove, which operates its own ad network, will handle ad sales for the media player across the Warner and syndication partner sites. The Cambridge, Mass.-based company is now lining up charter advertisers, which it expects to announce later this year, said Adam Berrey, vice president of marketing and strategy at Brightcove. Marketers will have the opportunity to select video ad formats including pre- and post-roll spots. For the new video service, Warner and Brightcove also plan to develop specialized sponsorships and promotions incorporating Warner content and artists. Brightcove previously struck a similar deal with Sony Music to create its Musicbox video service. But the Warner video player appears to be a more ambitious effort, going beyond music videos to include original and live material. Berrey noted that the Internet is giving record labels a new opportunity to connect directly with consumers. "Labels recognize that they're not consumer brands per se, but to the extent that they can forge relationships with consumers, it's a good thing for them," he said. In particular, he said labels can take advantage of unique content like behind-the-scenes footage to attract visitors to their sites. In a prepared statement, Alex Zubillaga, executive vice president of digital strategy and business development at Warner Music, said: "We want to give music fans many different, entertainment-rich ways to experience our extensive video catalog and the new content artists are creating every day for the digital space." To that end, Warner last month forged a deal with YouTube to make its music video catalog available on the popular video-sharing hub.
On the same day that it announced it would make its home valuation service freely available to any Web site, Zillow.com was hit with an FTC complaint on Thursday alleging that its valuation method is "highly inaccurate and misleading." The National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a nonprofit group that promotes equal access to credit and financial services to underserved communities, claims that the home valuation estimates provided by real estate site Zillow.com are reasonably accurate only around 30% of the time. By both over- and underestimating home values, Zillow.com is "causing substantial injury to consumers nationwide when they consider selling their home, using their home equity or buying or refinancing property," according to the complaint. Started only in February, Zillow.com quickly became one of the Web's most popular real estate sites by offering instant valuations and aerial photographs for addresses plugged into its Web site. It maintains valuations and data on 68 million U.S. homes. On its site, Zillow.com explains that it comes up with its home valuation "Zestimate" based on copious public data crunched into a proprietary algorithm. It also states that its estimate is a first step in determining a home's value, and not an appraisal. Overall, Zillow.com maintains that it has a median margin of error of 7.2%. In a statement issued in response to the NCRC complaint, the company said: "We believe these allegations are groundless. As we say consistently and prominently on our Web site, Zillow is a free research tool for consumers, and Zestimates are designed to be a starting point for consumers who want to learn about the value of homes. We make every effort to explain on our site the role of Zestimates as a research tool, as well as to clearly display our rates of accuracy for every area we cover." Questions about the accuracy of Zillow's estimates have arisen before. In an interview with Newsweek earlier this year, the company's CFO Spencer Rascoff said "The "zestimate" is only as strong as the data available." Before announcing Thursday that it would make its home valuation tool widely available, Zillow.com had already syndicated the service to other sites including Yahoo Real Estate, Prudential Northern California and Nevada, and ZipRealty, along with smaller agent sites. The company had said in July that it planned to offer the valuation service to third-party sites. In its complaint, the NCRC asks the FTC to also enjoin other sites, including Yahoo, from using the Zillow.com valuation service.
Microsoft today will break a new print and online ad campaign touting MSN's search capabilities. The ads promote Windows Live, which formally launched in September and will eventually replace MSN Search--itself less than two years old--as Microsoft's flagship Web search engine. Currently, Microsoft's search engine lags in popularity behind Google and Yahoo. Despite a widespread ad campaign last year, MSN Search hasn't been able to gain much traction with consumers. Last month, Microsoft sites garnered 11.9% of searches--down from 15.6% the year before, according to comScore. Google, meanwhile, grew its market share to 45.1% last month--up from 37.6% one year ago. The new full-page print ad--which will appear in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the San Jose Mercury News--highlights features in the engine's image search, local search, and mapping tools. In the ads, MSN appears to cast itself as an underdog compared to Google. The ad notes that some of the Live Search developers "didn't even pass calculus." "Before we begin, let us state the obvious. We're late to the game. We admit it," reads the ad copy, created by McCann WorldGroup. "But instead of shrugging our shoulders and becoming a footnote in search history, we've decided to write a few new chapters."
As the Edelman and Wal-Mart flogging controversy continues to simmer in the blogging community, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association yesterday released the WOMMA Ethics Assessment Tool, in hopes of clarifying what's acceptable and what's not, online and off. "We need a tool that will allow even the most junior staffer to know whether or not what they are doing is ethical or unethical," says Andy Sernovitz, the association's CEO. "This will protect brands, clients and agencies." The guidelines propose 20 questions covering six categories: honesty of relationship, honesty of opinion, honesty of identity, taking responsibility, respecting the rules, and hiring an agency. Questions include: "Would I be uncomfortable if my family or friends were involved in this campaign?" and "Is there anything about this campaign that we would be embarrassed to discuss publicly?" Sernovitz says the timing of the tool's release was not related to the recent Edelman flogging fiasco, when the public relations firm and self-proclaimed corporate blogging leader was revealed as the exclusive contributor to a trio of Wal-Mart-friendly blogs that were ostensibly written by independent writers. Edelman's activities have led to a grassroots call from critics for WOMMA to toss out the agency--which helped write the association's ethical guidelines not long before it broke most of them--but Sernovitz said that wasn't going to happen. "You don't expel a kid when he screws up, you send him to the guidance counselor," Sernovitz says. "Associations don't have many options for punishment." Likewise, the new document is well-meaning, but potentially toothless. An FAQ portion of the document pertaining to enforcement reads: "WOMMA recommends using market pressure to drive business away from stealth marketing firms and toward honest companies." WOMMA is calling for public comment from marketers and consumers through Nov. 9, in order to maximize the new tool's effectiveness.
Online newspapers drew an average of 57 million visitors a month last quarter--marking a 24% increase from last year, according to a report issued Thursday by the Newspaper Association of America. Web users also are viewing more pages and spending more time on newspapers' sites. Last quarter, people viewed an average of 47 pages a month--up from 40 last year--and they spent almost 42 minutes a month at online newspapers, up from around 37 minutes last year. Randy Bennett, vice president of audience and new business development for the NAA, attributed the jumps in audience to more effective marketing as well as new services and applications, including blogs and platforms for user-generated content, on newspaper Web sites. "Publishers are realizing people are looking for more and different things from the newspaper," he said. Newspapers still face challenges when it comes to monetizing online readers, however. Currently, an online reader isn't monetized at nearly the rate of a traditional print reader, with estimates for online revenue-per-reader varying from 3% to 33% of print advertising, according to research firm Outsell. Bennett acknowledged that newspapers are still experimenting with ways to monetize online readership, pointing to bundling of print and online sales as a promising way to boost the value of online readers. He also said newspapers should develop a national network for online ad sales. "It really needs to become much easier to buy across multiple properties, if newspapers are to stay competitive with single sites with a national footprint," he said.
Whirlpool Corporation has named Digitas, Chicago agency of record for interactive and relationship marketing for the company's U.S. brands, including KitchenAid, Maytag, Jenn-Air and Amana. Interactive duties include campaign strategy, creative, media planning, buying and execution. The relationship marketing assignment includes all direct-to-consumer marketing programs. Digitas also picked up PR and event marketing duties for Jenn-Air; Digitas already had responsibility for PR and event marketing for KitchenAid. Separately, Digitas reported Thursday that third-quarter profits fell to $6.2 million, or 7 cents a share--down from $7.9 million, or 8 cents per share, last year. When adjusted for restructuring and other costs, earnings came to $12.1 million, or 13 cents a share--beating analysts' expectations of 12 cents a share. Digitas also predicted fee revenue of between $94 million and $97 million and earnings of 8 cents to 10 cents a share for the fourth quarter. For the full year, the company predicted fee revenue of $387 million to $390 million, and earnings per share of 44 cents to 46 cents. "Our client relationships are strong and growing," David W. Kenny, chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said in a statement.
Children between the ages of 8 and 11 are almost as likely to surf as they are to watch television, according to a new report by market research company Youth Trends. Youth Trends reported that 81% of 8- to-11-year-olds have a computer at home--just slightly less than the 95% that have a TV at home. The vast majority--87%--of the tweens between 8 and 11 that have computers at home also access the Web from them, according to the report. Overall, about 70% of children between the ages of 8 and 11 go online from home, according to Youth Trends. That figure appears to be similar to an estimate by research company eMarketer, which reported earlier this month that 67% of U.S. children ages 8-11 are online. Youth Trends reported that 60% of the tweens with Web access from home go online at least once a day. An additional 33% said they go online at least once a week. What do they do online? More than one in three--37%--said they have used instant messaging in the last month, while 35% have played games, 31% have visited sites geared toward youngsters, 30% sent an e-greeting card, 23% posted photos, and 18% watched music or video clips. Also, they shop--or at least are beneficiaries of online purchases. Forty-six percent said their parents have bought something for them online. Youth Trends also asked youngsters about their ad preferences. Thirty-seven percent expressed a preference for free samples, 24% said they liked catalogs sent via postal mail, and 22% chose movie theater ads. Just 15% counted TV commercials among their preferred forms of advertising, while a scant 11% said they liked online ads. The report was based on interviews conducted in August with 900 youngsters ages 8-11.
Since the 2004 presidential election, we have seen a seismic shift in the online world--a transition that took political campaigns and advocacy organizations from a dependence on text-heavy, "static" Web sites and vaulted them into the dynamic world of blogs and vlogs, RSS feeds and news aggregators, social networks, video and photo-sharing, mashups and video e-mail. Political campaigns, both issue- and candidate-based, are experimenting with the new interactive tools, and trying to figure out how to turn clicks into loyal followers and convert energy into action. Not every technology that is available to candidates is a good fit--and campaigns and other issue-oriented groups traditionally trail the consumer marketing world when it comes to trying new things. But, with the communications landscape changing and audience expectations rising, the need to adapt is clear. Four of these new technologies seem to hold the greatest promise and deserve a closer look for those wishing to have their message in the mainstream--or even a small rivulet of community thought: social networks, video, mobile and mapping. Social Networking for Serious Candidates Social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook have become the darlings of the media world. The political world has taken notice, too. More than 1,600 candidates for office around the country posted profiles on Facebook, hoping members of the online community would adopt them as "friends" and spread the word around their communities. Kinky Friedman, a cigar-chewing, cowboy hat-wearing independent candidate for governor in Texas, has won acclaim with his MySpace profile. So has Chuck Poochigian, a buttoned-down Republican state senator running for Attorney General of California. Poochigian and plenty of others like him are blogging, posting photo galleries and video interviews and recruiting networks of volunteers via MySpace. Organizations with a political or social agenda should be doing the same, and some are.Two advocacy campaigns have combined social issues with popular brand entertainment and real action. The Save Darfur Coalition has 5,635 MySpace friends, and rising Democratic star Sen. Barack Obama left one of the 374 comments on the Darfur page. JoinRed, an effort sponsored by MySpace to raise money for women and children with HIV/AIDS in Africa, has teamed up with big-name celebrities like Oprah and Bono to create Red-branded products--and collected 457,278 friends along the way. Video: Beyond Stupid Human Tricks While Madison Avenue fights over how to use social video sites like YouTube and Google Video, political campaigns and organizations are actually leading the way in producing relevant and compelling video content and grabbing attention. Everyone is familiar with the negatives aspects of online video. Just look at what happened to Sen. George Allen's reputation when tens of thousands of replays of his famous "macaca" remark were passed around. But candidates on the left and right are posting campaign ads and other positive videos on the sites as well. It takes no time at all to locate video of the gubernatorial debate in California--or a rally featuring Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Go Mobile Not all eyeballs are glued to computer monitors or even laptop screens anymore. Our society is flooded with cell phones, PDAs, BlackBerries and other devices-- some 220 million across the U.S. alone. Mobile owners increasingly use their devices to get and share information, create content and mobilize in support of causes. Organizations with serious intent are already recognizing this opportunity and moving. Mobile Voter has launched a nationwide voter registration effort that users activate with a simple text message. The New York State Democratic Party has just created a Mobile Action Network to connect with its most dedicated activists. The U.S. Fund for UNICEF and a handful of charitable organizations nationwide are exploring ways to collect and process donations from cell phones. They could be pioneers in the movement that will result in the democratization of the political giving world. Geospatial Storytelling Political campaigns have always known that what is local is what matters, but they have not caught on to the technology that will let them localize their online efforts. The most important interactive trend today is the increasing localization of information. The stories we tell, the information we access, and the interaction we have with our peers must be personalized--and localized--to us. I call it Geospatial Storytelling. You probably are more familiar with it as "mapping." The principle is simple: you're fixing information in time and space for a local audience. CBS News now allows viewers to subscribe to a special feed inside Google Earth and browse all of their news articles by location. The Republican Party is using mapping to direct get-out-the-vote operations at the local level, creating personalized voter contact strategies for volunteers and activists. And, very soon, organizations will be able to map information directly to users based on where they are standing--for real-time activation and specific content. The days of wasting your digital breath are rapidly coming to an end. Politicians and organizations are starting to catch on--using social networking, video, mobile, and mapping to effectively promote a serious agenda. The early adopters are taking best practices from the marketing world and contributing strong case studies that all groups can follow. With the election still a few weeks away, the true impact these efforts will have is largely unknown. Interest in the political process is growing again, and the turnout on Nov. 7th is likely to show the results of this renewed interest. When we look back after the voting is complete we will be able to determine what worked and what didn't, and how politicians and organizations can continue to make progress as future opportunities arise.