Social networking may be among the hottest online categories, but it's also the most difficult to track user behavior on, according to a survey of digital marketing managers. The study by digital advertising and consulting firm Sapient found that marketers lack the ability to optimize their efforts across the range of online media, including social networks, e-mail, search and mobile content. More than half (51%) said they felt only "somewhat confident" or "not confident at all" about their ability to track campaigns across multiple channels in real-time. "Everyone wants the Tiffany box, but there is no Tiffany box," when it comes to Web analytics, said Dave Coffey, director of media services at Sapient, which surveyed 120 professionals directly or indirectly responsible for managing digital marketing budgets. "The lack of customization within analytics tool sets is affecting marketers' abilities to measure what they want and what's important to them." Online social media presents the biggest challenge, with 35% saying it's the category they're least confident about tracking in real-time. That's also why social networking is expected to see the biggest gain in Web analytics spending in the next 18 months. Forty-two percent of managers plan to use social networking analytics tools in the next year and a half, compared to 12% currently. What makes social networking especially difficult to measure is its amalgam of different media and communication features including blogging, messaging, video, Web pages and widgets. "One of the main things people find hard is that there's no consolidated dashboard of all this activity," Coffey said. Advertisers may rely on several vendors to track different types of usage within social networks but not centralize the data in one place, he said. The more established marketing vehicles of e-mail and search were found to be the most trackable online categories, at 32% and 30%, respectively. Search was also the cited as the channel providing the greatest return on-investment to managers' organizations (38%). And despite the buzz surrounding categories like social networking and mobile, search was where marketers expected to increase spending the most in the next six to 12 months (28%). By contrast, e-mail was the segment marketers planned to cut spending on the most in the next year. That suggests measurability isn't always the most important factor in determining digital marketing spend. The biggest proportion of those surveyed (25%) said they based spending allocation on demonstrable success in prior campaigns, followed by the ability to track digital tactics to revenue (20%), advice provided by my agency or colleagues (18%) and information provided by analytics tools (17%). More broadly, the study showed advertisers are concerned about the impact of mergers shaking up the industry in the last year. That M&A wave included Microsoft's acquisition of aQuantive and Google's purchase of DoubleClick. Forty-one percent fear getting lost in the shuffle with thousands of other clients because of consolidation in the online advertising business.
Dentsu, the powerful Japanese advertising conglomerate that once was a mover and a shaker in the U.S. marketplace, has turned its attention to China's burgeoning Internet advertising marketplace. Dentsu, which boasts itself as the largest advertising company brand and the fifth largest marketing and communications organization in the world, this morning unveiled a deal with China's largest digital media group, Focus Media Holdings Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hua Kuang Advertising, that will result in a new Internet advertising company in China. The new, as-yet-unnamed digital advertising services company will operate as a joint venture, that will be majority controlled by Dentsu. Dentsu will own 67%, while Hua Kuang will own the remaining 33%. Dentsu, which rarely takes minority positions in advertising services ventures, was last most active in the U.S. marketplace, when it helped Publicis take control of Bcom3, the agency holding company that controlled Benton & Bowles and other legendary agencies, that have since been absorbed into Publicis. The two agencies continue to maintain alliances and joint ventures in some key markets around the world. Dentsu's new Internet advertising venture in China, meanwhile, will focus on servicing existing clients of Dentsu agencies in the Cinese marketplace, working in conjunction with Focus Media's Internet advertising operations. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
When a nine-minute video of Tom Cruise touting the Church of Scientology hit the Web recently, the group quickly sent out takedown notices. Many publishers complied, but not Gawker Media's Nick Denton. Now, the notoriously litigious Scientologists have complained to Gawker that the video was pirated, and have demanded its removal. Denton argues that posting the video constitutes a fair use. "[I]t's newsworthy, and we will not be removing it," Denton wrote on the site last week. A spokeswoman for the Church of Scientology said the group is considering taking legal action. Should the matter come to court, legal experts say it's not easy to know who will prevail. "Copyright law really chokes on situations like this," said Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law. "It's not something that can be glibly resolved." One of the main issues in any litigation about the matter is likely to be whether Gawker was justified in posting nine-plus minutes of Cruise's proclamations, including statements like: "We are the authorities on the mind," and "When you're a Scientologist, and you drive by an accident, you know you have to do something about it ... you're the only one who can really help." Copyright lawyer Rick Kurnit of Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz said the Church of Scientology can argue that Gawker should have just published shorter excerpts to make its point. "Clearly, it's permissible to post some portion of it, to illustrate whatever the point of view being expressed about the underlying material is," Kurnit said. On the other hand, he said, Gawker can counter that it was necessary to publish as much as it did to show it wasn't taking some of the more bizarre statements out of context. Goldman added that while Gawker could have theoretically edited down the clip, "there's no question that showing the whole video from beginning to end shows a more complete picture." The Cruise statements on the clip were part of a three-hour video made of a 2004 awards ceremony at which the actor was honored for efforts championing world literacy, according to the Church of Scientology. The group's spokeswoman said the organization was concerned that the clip will be taken "out of context." The Church of Scientology's law firm, Moxon & Kobrin, claimed in its takedown notice to Gawker that the video had been stolen. But publishers typically are allowed to post material that's been stolen, provided they came across it lawfully, Kurnit said. Denton emphasized the newsworthiness of the clip in his post, but that alone doesn't mean it loses copyright protection, Kurnit said. Otherwise, documentary makers or news photographers, for example, wouldn't be able to charge for the right to publish their work. At the same time, whether material is independently newsworthy is one of the major factors that courts focus on when evaluating fair use claims, said Marjorie Heins, founder and director of the anti-censorship think tank Free Expression Policy Project. Regardless of the legal merits, the Scientologists have a long track record of suing for copyright infringement. In one famous case, the church unsuccessfully sought an injunction to prevent the Washington Post from publishing material gleaned from public court records. Even if the Church of Scientology could prevail in court, it doesn't appear likely that the group can permanently put the kibosh on the video, which has drawn more than one million views on Gawker.com alone. "No matter what they do at this point, the cat's out of the bag," Goldman said. "There's no way to put this video back behind the wall."
A start-up named Tumri is betting its success this year on the strength of its new CEO and its ad-serving products, which mix behavior technology with dynamic rich media. For the past year, Mountain View, Calif.-based Tumri has been developing an ad-targeting platform that integrates the branding power of display ads with performance text-based behaviorally placed ads. Ad units can be geared to a particular product message, a call to action, or a branding message. They can also combine a brand banner as part of a product ad--all based on who's going to be seeing them. The company's founder, Hari Menon, made room last week for a new CEO and president, Calvin Lui, who has been brought in to take Tumri technology to market. "Now that Tumri's ready for prime time, I've been brought on to productize the technology, which allows for extreme levels of targeting," Lui said. "That's where the demand is right now. Advertisers want performance along with enhancing the engagement layers." Lui, who most recently served as the chief operating officer of Web performance marketing company Connexus, is well aware of the stiff competition that Tumri faces. "We're going after the same ad dollars as Google with Google Gadget and Yahoo with its SmartAds program," Lui admitted. That said: "Anybody in the market can be a competitor and a partner." In the next several weeks, Tumri will announce partnerships with several Fortune 500 companies in sectors such as consumer electronics, retail, and travel, according to Lui. Tumri has already worked with some leading retailers--including Wal-Mart, shoe shop Zappos, Macy's and Sears--to develop widget storefronts dubbed AdPods, which Web publishers can carry on their sites. Menon will remain on the board of directors and shift his responsibilities to chief strategy officer. Tumri is backed by firms, including Lehman Brothers Venture Partners, Shasta Ventures and Accel Partners.
SEMDirector has rebranded itself Covario--and snagged $16 million in a Series B funding round led by FT Ventures. The rebranding is aimed at positioning the search marketing automation tech firm as a partner for enterprises in need of campaign management for display, mobile and social media programs--not just search. According to Craig Macdonald, vice president, product management and marketing at San Diego-based Covario, the company will use a significant portion of the new funding to attain that goal. Clients like WPP's Neo@Ogilvy and Intel previously tapped Covario for its suite of paid and natural search optimization tools, with a dashboard that enabled them to better manage campaigns with hundreds of thousands of keywords across multiple countries and languages. Under the new brand, Covario will also offer tools for display ad management and performance analysis, with social media and mobile features to come later in 2008. Macdonald said that Covario had been contemplating the expansion of their services for some time, but a flurry of client requests in the summer of '07 jump-started the development of a new set of products. "We had about 70% of our clients asking if we could add display ad performance into the dashboard, because they wanted to see the comparative performance of search and display," he said. "And we realized that we needed to change our name if we were going to expand our product set, because 'Search Engine Marketing Director' was no longer appropriate for the wider opportunity we were going after." The one-stop dashboard that can tie together campaign performance analysis from across all digital channels is the fabled "Holy Grail" of online advertising--and even Google has sought to capitalize on the market for one, releasing details of its own dashboard in progress. Macdonald said that there's room for all potential players in the space, and that third-party automation and management firms would retain a unique value proposition in a saturated market--simply because they were platform-agnostic. "We have a great relationship with Google, and a number of our clients are already doing a significant amount of performance tracking with them," Macdonald said. "But Covario's tools can consolidate performance across multiple platforms and ad types, including Google and DoubleClick, MSN and ATLAS, and Yahoo for search and display in the U.S. But we also work outside the U.S. with data from Baidu, Navver and Russia's Yandex." Some clients might have trepidation about giving complete access to detailed ad spend data and post-click behavior to a campaign management service that's run by the platform-provider itself, he said. Covario would use much of the $16 million Series B financing for building out the new product sets and their distribution and support mechanisms, Macdonald said. "We're working on additional capabilities so that the ad agencies can better use our technologies themselves, and we're bundling more advanced analytics into the system," he said. "The new tools will have scenario-based, predictive analysis functionality, so that advertisers can plug in the different channels they'll use, including mobile, social media, search or display--and see how changes will affect campaign performance before they implement them."
Alacra has jumped into the ad network game with the launch of the Premium Content Ad Network (PCAN), a new pay-per-action (PPA) network geared toward publishers of finance and business-focused content. The New York-based content management and ad services provider for the finance industry aims to help publishers monetize their content by serving ads tied to research reports and white papers contained within the Alacra Store. For example, visitors to a stock tips Web site that search for info on Microsoft will see ads related to the reports on the software giant's quarterly earnings and stock analysis --not generic ads for Windows Vista. If a user sees the ad and ends up purchasing a document from Alacra, the publisher receives a cut of the profit, hence the PPA model. Currently, there are more than 16 million documents in the Alacra Store offering business insight into major corporations like General Electric and others. EDGAR Online and The Livermore Report are the first two publishers that have signed to be part of Alacra's PCAN network. "We developed PCAN so publishers can offer their readers ads directly based on their specific interests--contextually relevant financial information," said Steven Goldstein, Chairman and CEO of Alacra. "This is the first online ad network specifically for financial and business content."
BET has removed a section of its Web site that offered photos of women in seductive poses, clad in bikinis and lingerie. Before its removal last week, the "B-Girls" section had been a long-time staple of BET.com, and retained a prominent position as the site was re-launched last fall. Viacom network BET says the withdrawal of the section was part of a plan set in motion last fall. However, an activist who launched a campaign targeting "B-Girls" advertisers--just days before the section was removed--says that an advertiser protest led to BET's decision. The "B-Girls" section encouraged women to send in appealing photos of themselves, with many featuring them in risqué clothing and suggestive poses. The photos were sometimes accompanied by a listing of bust-waist-hips measurements. The "B-Girls" content is unrelated to any of BET's on-air programming. It was simply intended to boost traffic and interest for the Web site, BET says. Early last fall, BET.com underwent a redesign. A "B-Girls" link was displayed on the "drop-down" menu that stretched across the home page. Users who visited the photos were given the option of transferring them to their personal sites, along with Facebook and MySpace pages. Ad banners for the likes of McDonald's, the U.S. Army, General Mills and Kraft ran on the "B-Girls" page. Some debate remains about whether any advertiser backlash about the "B-Girls" content led BET to pull it down. Gina McCauley, who runs a blog that seeks to combat negative images of African-American women, launched a campaign Jan. 10 encouraging women to call and write advertisers to complain about their presence. By last week, "B-Girls" was gone. In a statement, BET said: "The move was unrelated to the blogger protests or any advertiser feedback of which there was none." BET said the link on the "drop-down menu" was removed in November, and the content had not been updated in several months. Also, the network said the removal was planned as part of an ongoing upgrade to BET.com, as it "has been evolving into an even stronger site." But McCauley claims her campaign persuaded one or more advertisers--she isn't sure which--to contact BET, and that led to the network dropping the section. "This is just one small glimpse of what black women, and the men who care about them, can do if we open up our mouths to the right people," she wrote on WhatAboutOurDaughters.org last Thursday. A representative for Kraft told the Chicago Sun-Times that the company's ad should not have been on the page when it ran last fall, calling it an "unfortunate juxtaposition." But a McDonald's representative told the paper that the company had no issue. "Different demographics and different audiences want to be communicated to in different ways, and we believe the content reaches the young adult audience that it is intended to reach," Danya Proud of McDonald's was quoted as saying. The Kraft representative added that the company's ad was placed on the "B-Girls" page as part of a larger ad buy. Some advertisers could have made deals with ad networks selling inventory whereby they don't necessarily know where their ads run. Attempts to contact advertisers were unsuccessful Monday during the holiday. BET has not moved away entirely from displaying photos of women in seductive poses on BET.com. A section called "Shine" offers photos of women--and men--that site visitors can rank. Some women appear in bikinis, while others show off their backsides--although there are other photos that some might consider more tasteful. Women and men can offer their e-mail addresses for people to write to them as a social networking function. Advertisers with banners appearing on "Shine" include KFC, Chrysler, ChicagoTribune.com and Universal Studios. BET does offer visitors the opportunity to mark images as "offensive, copywritten or broken." Jeanine Liburd said the photos are not dissimilar to what a contestant might wear on the CW network's "America's Next Top Model," among other outlets. "The content is not inappropriate," she said. "A black woman in her bathing suit is no different than what you would find on SportsIllustrated.com. It is not limited to black women in their bathing suits. It's more about men and women's personal style." SportsIllustrated.com includes a section related to the magazine's annual "Swimsuit" issue. Activist blogger McCauley, an attorney, said she did not contact BET before asking her readers to contact advertisers. She has criticized BET before for airing programming she deems demeaning to African-Americans. BET has long been criticized for airing music videos that allegedly glorify negative stereotypes. But recently, the network has looked to develop more top-quality original programming, including "Sunday Best" (a gospel singer competition), "Keyshia Cole: The Way It Is" (a reality show that follows the singer offstage) and specials featuring interviews with Presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. BET has also launched a "Decision '08" section on BET.com about the coming election.
It's that magical time of year again. Of course I'm referring to the annual ritual of declaring that the coming year will be The Year of Online Video. Sure, we've heard it all before-and each year has indeed brought online video that much closer to the big time, if not quite living up to the hype. But in 2008, five key trends point to real breakthroughs in the emergence of online video as a major medium --for advertisers as well as consumers and media companies. 1. Must-See Video Goes Portable To date, most of the excitement around online video has centered on user-generated content. While some of this stuff can rival major media in terms of creativity and entertainment value, for consumers it's more about instant gratification than appointment viewing. If you have a free moment at your desk, you'll click the link for the hilarious webisode du jour, but it wouldn't break your heart to miss it; tomorrow will offer plenty of new options. But the kind of high-quality online video that will reach critical mass in 2008 is another matter entirely-big-media content like Heroes or 24, high-definition online video, services like Microsoft Media Center. For video that really matters, portability becomes key, so you can watch it wherever, whenever, and however you want. This creates a powerful opportunity for advertisers: as consumers move quality downloads from PC to portable device to TV, they'll take seamlessly integrated, optimized advertising with them--and hear the marketer's message anywhere they enjoy video content, from the media room to the carpool to the beach. This unique dynamic will draw increasing ad dollars to online video, fuelling further momentum for high-quality downloads and will create new advertising opportunities. 2. Higher Quality Content Commands a Better Screen Once you're downloading quality content, the question arises of how you're going to watch it. A cramped browser window might be fine for a cat flushing a toilet-maybe even preferable--but a premium production calls for a richer viewing experience. Fortunately, as prices drop and quality improves, the difference between a TV set and a computer monitor is becoming less and less distinct. In today's WiFi households, they're all just displays, and they're going to be used interchangeably to view both traditional video and Web-based content. This concept has been a little slow to catch on so far, for both media companies and consumers. The content that could be extended from the PC to the TV hasn't been all that compelling, and AppleTV, which delivers YouTube and iTunes-purchased content to an HD set, hasn't exactly set the world on fire. But this will change as more full-screen destinations and applications launch--Microsoft's Media Center InternetTV, HP's Next.TV, NBC Direct, and so on--and people download more content that lends itself better to a living room couch than a desktop crouch. At that point, online video becomes more fully competitive with TV in its traditional bailiwick--with mobility that TV could only dream of. 3. Advertising Standards Draw the Big Money The industry has been clamoring for standards in online video formats, placements, tracking, and reporting, and with good reason. A simple standard helped Google and Overture achieve huge success in the text world by making it simple for advertisers to modify and optimize their ads to improve performance. Standardize video ads to help marketers refine their targeting and optimize their creative across platforms, and new dollars will flood into online video. The same applies for measurement. Data trackers like Nielsen are finally recognizing online video and time-delayed (TiVo) viewing habits, and launching new technologies to gather and analyze granular data about viewer demographics and more. It's a start--but more is needed. It's a little too early to call this a trend rather than an aspiration, but my guess is that 2008 will bring more consistency in the way publishers track and report metrics. It just makes sense: advertisers need scale and consistency before they'll commit big money online. It's too hard for an agency buyer if everything is a "one-off" that needs to be rationalized to their client. Make it easier to buy online video, and they'll beat a path to our door. 4. Transparent Inventory Builds Advertiser Confidence In the eyes of media buyers, TV has always had one key edge over online video: the ability to know exactly where and when their ad is appearing. Without this kind of transparency and clearly defined types of content in online video, advertisers can't feel confident about what they're really buying--is it contextually relevant? What demographic am I reaching? Is it brand safe? As with standardization, this is as much a challenge to the industry as a prediction, but in 2008 our focus needs to be on making online advertising as simple and safe as TV. When a TV advertiser says they are showing up on ESPN or the Oxygen network, we have an instinctive feel for what the content is and therefore, who the demographic is. We need to add this to the online video advertising landscape. In addition to the Web sites or domains on which the ad will run, ad networks and Web sites need to name specific content or content channels on which the advertiser is running. In the TV world, it's simple to show the client that their ad is running in the 3rd slot at 4:00 pm on Sunday on the Lifetime network. The highest level of transparency the online video world has been able to offer is: "Just keep clicking on the site until you see your ad. It might take a while." And that's just not going to cut it. If we can get our act together, the opportunities are tremendous. Major media companies are eager to meet the needs of big advertisers for more efficient multi-platform, multiple-screen campaigns that put the same consistent message everywhere the video appears with a single buy. By tying optimized advertising to video content wherever it goes--streaming, download, mobile--online video ad networks can help content producers meet this need, and encourage advertisers to think of online video as an integral part of their video advertising program. 5. Online-Native Video Gains Respect The rising quality of online video isn't just a matter of repurposed TV shows. Traditional networks and professional production teams are increasingly developing new content specifically for the online market, recognizing the rise of PCs and other devices as the entertainment option of choice for many people, especially the younger consumers who already spend so much of their time online. Improving content tracking is helping this trend, as producers become comfortable that they can syndicate and monetize their content wherever it lands-PC, TV, or mobile. Depending on how long it lasts, the writers' strike may have a major impact as well. TV and film writers are already freelancing for online outlets, developing their own content delivery sites, and even pursuing venture funding for media businesses of their own. These are people capable of the highest-quality work, and who are deeply versed in the practices of big media--who will now put that knowledge and expertise to work in new places. It's impossible to tell where it will lead, but any disruption of traditional media models creates a more favorable environment for new models of content creation and delivery. Add it all up, and 2008 looks to be a busy year. Will all of these trends come to fruition? I hope they will, but it will take more than good intentions. All the signs clearly point to a vast and growing opportunity for the online video advertising industry in the months to come. Whether we rise to the occasion by delivering the transparent, simple, and portable solutions that advertisers are looking for is entirely up to us. Kadambi is the co-founder and CEO of YuMe Networks. He has over 18 years of experience in the areas of networking, hardware architecture and semiconductors. Prior to co-founding YuMe in 2004, Kadambi was Vice President R&D and Officer of Netopia, Inc., a publicly held manufacturer of DSL equipment and service provider for ISP's and carriers. Kadambi joined Netopia upon its acquisition in 1999 of StarNet Technologies, a VoDSL company he had co-founded.