Impulse shopping buys are dying out as a result of tools such as social networks, the mobile Web and coupon sites, according to research from Yahoo and UM, the Interpublic media agency. Instead of buying on impulse, the research found, shoppers have switched to a mindset that is "analogous to playing a game." Titled "The Long and Winding Road: Gamesmanship of Shopping," the study found that consumers are now involved in a complex process of discovering, evaluating and socializing -- all part of an ongoing hunt to get the best possible deal. Most (66%) of the 2.485 consumers interviewed, UM and Yahoo said, are aided in this quest by search engines, consumer portals, online articles and reviews, brand sites and retailer sites. This turns shopping into a collaborative process involving other "players," rather than an individual task -- and into an "intriguing path of discovery" rather than a "chore." While an increased reliance on trusted Internet sources has led to less impulsive purchasing, the time taken to make decisions on non-impulse purchases has shortened considerably. Consumers use their "vast networks" combined with Internet-friendly devices to "help make the right decisions quickly." Specific study results included: ·55% of shoppers are less impulsive due to the Internet, and 17% are more impulsive. ·69% trust the Internet the most for information on products and services, compared with 43% who trust magazines and 35% who trust TV. ·69% seek more deals and coupons online. ·61% use "evaluate" tools, such as deal collection emails and coupon sites, throughout the shopping process. And 49% use "socialize" tools, such as conversations with friends and family and consumer-generated media. But researchers note they rely much more on consumer reviews than on social media. ·68% are aware of more brands before they buy something, and 72% feel the Internet makes it easier to figure out which brands to consider. ·59% believe they have an advantage over marketers and retailers because the Internet allows them to seek others' opinions
Hoping to make the Web safer for brand marketers, DoubleVerify on Tuesday is expected to relaunch its BrandShield ad-blocking service. While the online ad market is improving, fear of inappropriate ad placement remains a drag on spending, insists Oren Netzer, CEO of DoubleVerify. "To boost transparency and accountability in the industry, we've built our solution to specifically address this problem," he said. BrandShield attempts to identify unwanted Web pages to prevent awkward placements before they occur. The new service can be customized, based on blacklist sites, whitelist sites, inappropriate page content categories and targeted geographies. These features can also be used by ad networks, demand-side platforms and ad exchanges through the BrandShield Connect API. According to recent research by DoubleVerify, the most compliant ad platforms showed incidents of noncompliance just 3% of the time -- outperforming the lower tier of players by almost nine times. DoubleVerify says it can deliver a 96% see-through rate, or the rate at which ad impressions can be accurately located and verified. To do this, even before an ad is served to a page, DoubleVerify analyzes the site content with a proprietary crawling technology and compares it with agency campaign guidelines. The company claims it can identify more than 75 possible inappropriate content categories, including natural disasters, aviation accidents and financial crisis.
Companies touting clickable video technologies -- which allow viewers to click on objects to obtain more information or make online purchases -- have had their starts and stops over the years. London-based wireWAX, which recently entered the field, has added the ability for advertisers or other users to tag moving objects dynamically and to insert buttons containing interactive forms, social media links, apps and more. wireWAX has also arrived in the U.S. via an unlikely partner -- 12-year-old search-centric Denver digital agency Location3 Media. As agency president Alex Porter told Online Media Daily, video represents only "a small percentage of our overall revenue now...but it's growing steadily." Location3's 60-person staff does include a video manager, Nathan Evans, who said he was checking out offerings from Brightcove, the agency's online video platform, when he first came across wireWAX. He then contacted wireWAX directly, leading to custom collaborations -- and to Location3's status as one of only three content and production partners cited on wireWAX's Web site, along with Wiseguy in London and Social TV in Greece/Cyprus. On the platform side, in addition to Brightcove, wireWAX has partnered with YouTube and VMix for plug-ins; it is currently in beta with an iPad app. Location3 Media has tested the technology on an agreeable "client," its own Local Search Traffic division. Location3 teamed with LightGroup, a digital production company, to make a video showing small business owners how to optimize local listings and develop successful search advertising. The video marks wireMAX's first integration with Brightcove Express, Brightcove's service for smaller companies -- and debuts new in-video functionality developed by Location3 and wireWAX, including SMS messaging, and the integration of maps with live search results. The video is also chock-full of tagged objects. For example, as the narrator gives tips on improving rank in search listings, viewers can search live results via a pop-up window to see where they rank currently in local map listings. The video runs four minutes, but Evans noted that with clickable technology, "usually you'll see viewer engagement even longer than the length of the video itself." Such increased viewer engagement is paramount in speeding up the shift of ad dollars from TV to online video," Porter said, adding that being in a Brightcove layer also allows Location3 to see "where viewers are engaged and what they're clicking on." To date, the clicking has mostly (71%) been in the video's "position, accuracy and content tags," according to Evans, because the video's narrator specifically instructs viewers to click in those locations. Other tags, so-called "Easter egg" tags such as "Get pickup lines via SMS," have received far fewer clicks, with the live search functionality proving most popular in this group. "Next time, we'll reference those more explicitly," Evans said, explaining that after decades of traditional TV watching, viewers still expect to "lean back and be passively entertained. We're fighting that viewer behavior....If you don't really condition viewers to click on the video, they won't know to do it." Now that Location3 has seen results from the wireWAX technology, Porter is moving to increase the agency's video revenues from current clients -- "four or five proposals are on the table now" -- as well as using wireWAX as a tool to attract new clients. For possible real-world consumer applications, Location3's clients, which currently include Boden, Red Robin, Batteries Plus, and FASTSIGNS, need only check out wireWax's latest global work -- a "fully shoppable" video produced by Ridley Scott Associates' Black Dog for online men's fashion retailer Oki-Ni.
The $10 billion private valuation of FarmVille-maker Zynga and mounting anticipation over the company's expected IPO filing is testament to the sizzle that surrounds social gaming. But even with a whopping 250 million people playing casual games a month, a new Forrester report finds U.S. marketers aren't trying to capitalize on the craze. The vast majority -- 84% -- have no plans to use games in their U.S. marketing strategies in the next year, and only 19% believe games will become more effecting marketing vehicles in the next three years. Forrester views this as a missed opportunity and advises advertisers to begin testing in-game marketing efforts to tap into the millions of engaged consumers. In addition to sheer scale, the report notes the gaming audience offers attractive demographics and characteristics. Women make up 59% of adult social gamers, and mothers are more likely than average to be gamers. The gaming population also spans many age groups among adults of both sexes, with Gen X players accounting for the single biggest segment: 30%. People who play social games are also active social networkers and more likely to be receptive to advertising in social media. In that vein, more than one-third of adult gamers spend more time connecting with friends on social networks than in person, and almost half communicate more on social sites than via instant messaging or email. How can marketers get in the game? The report suggests focusing on casual games from established developers, such as CrowdStar, Electronic Arts-owned Playfish, and, of course, Zynga, which have a combined user base of almost 60 million. When it comes to tactics, offering in-game currency in return for taking a survey or signing up for service is one common marketing approach. "This option is the best choice for marketers focused on direct response, as some offers require subscribing to a service," states the report authored by Forrester analyst Elizabeth Shaw Smith. In CityVille, for example, Discover offers 720 City Cash currency to those who apply and are approved for its Discover More Card, while Netflix offers 176 City Cash to new subscribers. Other ad options include virtual in-game billboards and branded virtual goods. Cascadian Farm, for instance, sold more than 500 million virtual organic blueberries in FarmVille, increasing unaided brand awareness more than fivefold, according to Zynga. Companies including McDonalds' and Farmer's Insurance have also advertised via FarmVille. At the high end, companies can also create their own games. But Forrester warns this is a costly and risky move. There is no guarantee the new game will catch on with consumers. One success it points to in this area is ESPN's partnership with Playdom to create ESPNU College Town, where players build a campus, affiliate with a real school, and take on other players in basketball or football. A well-known sports-related brand like ESPN has a leg up in developing its own game, especially when it can work with Playdom, a sister Disney company. One factor holding marketers back is the need for advertisers to become better educated about this emerging ad category, according to Shiv Singh, head of digital, PepsiCo Beverages, which has used social gaming in campaigns for Pepsi, Mountain Dew and other brands. Another is that budgets don't necessarily keep pace with the ever-increasing number of ways people consume media. "Marketers still have to make choices, because it's not like everyone's moved out of TV or other facets of digital. These are all laid on top. So it's a matter of knowing what works for your business and what's appropriate for your brand," he said. To that end, Forrester recommends first determining what type of audience you're trying to reach before settling on a certain tactic. That means targeting according to game topic and the specific demographics for a given title. Choosing relevant metrics to gauge campaign success is another key step before plunging in. "For social games, developers and third parties are currently tracking metrics, such as fans, click-throughs, time spent, site visits, brand awareness and purchase intent," according to the study. Then marketers can decide whether the results are worth the investment.
Ad network OpenX plans to announce Tuesday securing $20 million in venture capital funding. SAP Ventures, the VC arm for enterprise software maker SAP, led the round and will take a seat on the company's board of directors. AOL Ventures, Mitsui & Co. Global Investment, and Presidio Ventures, Sumitomo's wholly owned investment subsidiary, also participated in the round, along with existing investors Accel Partners, Index Ventures and DAG Ventures. The infusion brings total investments to more than $50 million. Marketers following the move by enterprise software makers into the digital ad space can see how managing ads through an ad network supply chain can become analogous to moving physical goods from manufacturing to the retail store floor. "The world of enterprise software and the world of software for digital ads will likely continue to connect as the digital world becomes more mainstream," said Tim Cadogan, CEO of OpenX, Pasadena, Calif. "For us it's useful to learn from SAP on how enterprise software works and scales." OpenX will use the funds to further expand internationally by making acquisitions and building out technology, Cadogan said. International plans will find the company in China, but he said research on the country's structural business nuances will become important to avoid missteps. Yahoo recently became the focus of controversy in terms of how it handled the transition of its 43% stake in Alibaba Group, especially the ecommerce site Alipay. It turns out that Chinese law prohibits foreign ownership of online payment companies. Aside from China, the company will look into further expanding across Europe, and Korea and Latin America. It also will search for acquisition targets. "The capital will allow us to look at potentially buying smaller companies and teams that fit in with the platform we have," Cadogan said. "We build the platform in modular, which means it's easy to connect with third-party systems, but also technologies we may buy in the future." Three areas Cadogan would like OpenX to expand into: video, mobile, and reporting and analytics. While at Yahoo, Cadogan's acquisition strategy focused on business traction and talent. In general, the larger acquisitions typically center on "business trajectory," but talent would contribute. The company also will invest in marketing communications to spread the word about its vision. Pushing a revenue serving platform, a combination of an ad exchange and ad server, so publishers can manage revenue in one place will require evangelism and marketing because it's a bit of a paradigm shift in the way networks work. During the past two years since launching, revenue generated from the OpenX Market rose nearly 600%, from zero to "tens of millions of dollars" annually, Cadogan said. "By this time, most companies rarely get above the $10 million dollar mark," he said. "Few get above the $100 million mark, but we're tracking to get there quite quickly." In the past year, OpenX struck international partnerships for the exchange with Dentsu-cci in Japan and Orange-France Telecom in Europe.
Escalating their battle with video site Zediva, the movie studios are asking a judge to prohibit the company from streaming movies online. "Defendants are blatantly violating the Studios' exclusive right to publicly perform their copyrighted works," the Motion Picture Association of America said in a request for an injunction, filed Thursday in federal district court in New York. "Defendants' continuing unauthorized exploitation of the studios' works is likely to cause irreparable harm." Zediva, which launched out of beta in March, charges users $2 to stream a movie for up to two weeks. Unlike the rental companies Netflix and Redbox, which impose a 28-day wait for new releases, Zediva offers users streams of films as soon as they hit the retail stores. The company characterizes itself as a rental service, arguing that it buys DVDs, then only streams as many as it owns at any one time. "The only difference between watching a rented DVD on the DVD player in one's living room and watching a rented DVD using Zediva is that rather than connecting to the DVD player with a short cable, Zediva lets users connect to the DVD player over the Internet," Zediva argues in court papers. Zediva also says that because it lawfully purchased the films, it can rent them under the "first sale" concept, which allows anyone who purchases CDs, books or movies to resell or rent them. The company says it is entitled to a ruling that the service it offers doesn't infringe the studios' copyright. But the motion picture industry, which initially sued Zediva for copyright infringement in April, argues that the start-up isn't a rental company but a video-on-demand service that publicly performs movies. In addition, the MPAA argues, Zediva harms companies that have obtained licenses, like iTunes and Amazon, by siphoning away customers. Copyright expert and New York Law School professor James Grimmelmann has said that Zediva faces an uphill battle in court. He said that courts have ruled that brick-and-mortar stores that allowed consumers to rent video cassettes and watch them on the premises were infringing copyright by performing the movies.
All of this talk of summer blockbusters recently got me thinking about what goes into making a hit. We read about "formulas" to produce them, but the reality is that the truly great films are more than the sum of their parts. They need a great story that creatively ties all of the elements together. A similar debate is underway in the online marketing industry over the use of insights and expression of creativity in developing effective digital advertising campaigns. There's a perception that insights narrow creative objectives, while creative impulses, insufficiently checked, hold an unacceptable level of risk for the brands involved. In reality, the two need to work together to guarantee success. How then, can we strike a balance that's between fresh and personally relevant content and avoid the scourge of commoditization? Understand both the power and limitations of insights At its best, the Web is a place for deeply personal experiences. It's a platform for communicating our own thoughts, preferences, and feelings and enables each of us to seek out uniquely relevant digital content. What that means for advertisers is that the insights derived from interaction on the Web offer a more accurate sense of what consumers will find creative. Without personal relevance, the creativity doesn't matter much. However, once advertisers truly understand what matters to a given audience, those insights can inform -- not dictate -- creative development. A keener understanding of what resonates with a target group of consumers can even spark new creative ideas, in terms of both content and execution. With this in mind, it's crucial to rely on data-driven insights as a guide facilitating the creative process and not an ironclad code stifling it. It's dangerous to overrely on the quantitative as the human element -- so crucial to the digital experience -- gets lost, resulting in a campaign that fails to create a personal connection. One brand that found a middle ground is Kellogg's and its Moments of Motherhood (M.O.M.) online community hub. Data allowed the brand to better understand all the little things that go into being a mom, and as a result, they could develop a comprehensive online portal to meet those needs, speaking passionately and engagingly while tastefully integrating brand messaging. The resulting site offers original video series on motherhood in the style of E!'s "The Soup," blog posts from parenting gurus and a special photo group for family moments. Trust the creatives Nowadays, technological hurdles to unleashing creativity online are being smashed daily, meaning there are ever-increasing opportunities for brands to stand out in new ways. Today's creatives are running with the opportunity, producing truly remarkable and bar-raising digital work for what kinds of campaigns are possible. Brands that allow creative teams to take risks are likely to see a payoff in the form of a campaign that strikes a chord with audiences in ways they have not experienced before. For example, GM's creative team developed full-screen ads for three Chevy models on Yahoo!'s Log-in Page, which had never been done before. In the end, it was well worth it -- as searches for both Chevy Traverse and Equinox reached their highest level since GM launched specific TV and print ads for each. Develop metrics that measure the quantitative and qualitative Perhaps the best way to achieve a level of balance between data and creativity going forward is to develop a measurement system that indicates the role that each plays in reaching and engaging audiences. While some element of uncertainty will always be involved, the more accurately brands can justify their investment in developing campaigns that bring together a balance of data and art, the more innovation we are likely to see in this space. Just like with the movies, consumers online gravitate to content that speaks to their own personal interests, opinions or beliefs. But it takes a healthy dose of artistic input to turn that content into a true story, taking a campaign from good to great. Achieving that balance allows advertisers to take their brands to new heights online.