Digital video platforms are getting more money from traditional TV budgets -- and more to come in 2012. Break Media, the digital video ad network, says there will a 32% rise in digital video advertising dollars coming from TV budgets. But that won't be the biggest gain for the Internet overall. Overall organic advertising budget growth will rise 38%, with display budgets growing 45%. “Video advertising spending is growing faster than expected, and this is the first time a significant portion of the increased resources devoted to it are coming from television budgets,” stated Andy Tu, vice president of marketing for Break Media. One research estimate, from Forrester Research, says digital video advertising will reach $2.0 billion for 2011 and $5.4 billion in 2016. Break says more than 90% of all advertisers plan to use video advertising networks in the coming year, and the ad nets' share of all digital video will grow to 41% from 20%. All this has forced up usage in the cost per view (CPV) pricing formula -- as cost per view is offered more by content providers. It says CPV has grown to a 40% share. Still, many ad networks and/or publishers' sites also still offer cost-per-thousand (CPM) and cost-per-click (CPC) pricing models. For its annual digital video advertising trends survey, Break Media says such gains will be put onto the most rapidly growing areas like mobile, as well as those that provide advertising option formats for consumers. The growth of mobile devices is a big part of this -- it has increased almost twofold in the past year and is expected to jump another 16% in 2012. The survey says while video ads come in a number of formats, most advertisers still prefer pre-roll.
Ever wondered whether visual special effects (VFX) were only good for gussying up agency work? Such effects could be better at achieving certain campaign goals, according to new research from VFX provider GenArts. According to GenArts, high-quality VFX engage audiences, improve quality perception, and increase viewers’ likelihood to purchase. Specifically, VFX were shown to drive a 13% increase in downloading a coupon, a 9% lower abandonment rate, and an increase in purchase intent of up to 12%. As online video advertising expands, GenArts also believes that VFX will be necessary for brands to stand out. “Video usage is expanding across all media, and it’s growing more difficult for advertisers to meaningfully attract their target audience,” says Katherine Hays, CEO of GenArts. “Advertisers are challenged to make their ads as effective as possible, but it’s not always clear which tools enable you to do that.” GenArts used videos featuring sports lifestyle company Puma to verify the impact that visual effects have on the overall effectiveness of video promotions. The resulting case study tested two versions of the same Puma sneaker promotion -- one treated with visual effects and one without. The effect-treated video outperformed the untreated constant and demonstrated significant increases in engagement metrics across the board. The effect-treated video registered a 9% to 12% increase in purchase intent; a 10% increase in brand preference; a 9% increase in brand credibility; a 9% increase in time spent watching the video; a 9% increase in likeliness to watch the video again; a 9% decrease in likeliness to stop watching the video before its end; and up to a 13% increase in likeliness to download a coupon. “We’ve found visual effects to be an effective way to make videos of all types perform better and to help cut through in a cluttered marketplace,” said Antonio Bertone, CMO of Puma. While still small compared to TV money, ad-supported online video is on fire. In October alone, Americans viewed 7.5 billion video ads, according to recent data from comScore Video Metrix.
Amid reports of consumer dissatisfaction with the Kindle Fire, Amazon Thursday said it has been selling its new tablet at a rate of 1 million a week for the last three weeks. Based on initial sales, the online retailer is ramping up production. Before the Amazon announcement, the tech industry and Wall Street analysts had projected the company would sell up to 5 million Kindle Fire units before year's-end. That estimate now appears to be on the low side. Launched in mid-November, the Amazon tablet had recently come under a cloud following reports that customers were returning the device because of various deficiencies. Well-known user experience expert Jakob Nielsen had also blasted the Kindle Fire in a recent review. In response to complaints, Amazon confirmed it will release a software update for the device in the next two weeks. The company said the upgrade would improve performance, touch navigation and give customers the ability to choose what items display on the carousel. The Kindle Fire is already the second-most popular tablet behind the iPad, according to research firm IHS, which estimated Amazon will claim 13.8% of the market in the fourth quarter compared to Apple's commanding 65.6% share. IHS projected that Amazon will ship 3.9 million units during the quarter. Macquarie Group analyst Ben Schachter reiterated its view that the Kindle Fire will enjoy mainstream success. "Despite a few high-profile negative press articles, we think that the attractive price point, the device functionality, and its associated services will continue to appeal to consumers. Given the early sales numbers, it is likely that our 5mm unit estimate for the quarter could ultimately prove conservative," he wrote in a research note Thursday. He added that the firm expects Amazon to roll out the Kindle Fire internationally in the first quarter of 2012. Amazon’s stock was up about 1% Thursday to $182 per share after suffering a downturn in connection with the negative reports about Kindle's performance.
After missing expectations in Q3 sales, tablets are expected to come back as Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble drive the market, says IDC Worldwide. The market research firm says tablet sales in Q3 were up sequentially 23.9% worldwide, representing 18.1 million units. It had expected 19.2 million units sold. Still, the year-over-year growth in this platform is a staggering 264.5% compared to Q3 2010. IDC says the availability of more and cheaper models in the space will drive the market this holiday. Its projection for full-year tablet sales is being revised upward to 63.3 million units, up from 2.5 million. For now it remains an iPad-dominated world. Apple commands a 61.5% market share in Q3, down from 63.3% in Q2. The next-largest seller Samsung, had but a fraction of Apple’s sales, with a 5.6% share. HP’s brief Playbook appearance netted a 5% share in the end. And the Barnes & Noble Nook Color had a 4.5% slice. With the expansion of the tablet market into 7-inch offerings from Amazon and B&N, the terrain will change considerably, says Tom Mainelli, research director, Mobile Connected Devices, IDC. While fragmented across some heavily modified and relatively closed versions, the Android OS will move from a 32.4% share of the tablet market in Q3 to a 40.3% share. This will not be a direct threat to Apple’s market because IDC sees the low-priced 7-inch products appealing to a different buyer. “The Kindle Fire at $199 and the Nook Tablet at $249 appeal to different tastes and consumers that likely aren’t ready to spend $99 or more on a device that is not a replacement for their PC,” says Mainelli. “When Amazon announced their price of $199, it not only gave consumers more of a pot to jump into, but consumers could feel OK about buying a device they wouldn’t use at work and wasn’t a replacement for a PC." Mainelli says that the apparent success of the Fire and Nook Tablet demonstrate that there is a market for tablets outside of the iPad. Amazon announced today that its entire Kindle line is selling over 1 million units a week, although the retailer did not specify what share of those Kindles were Fire models. Likewise, Barnes & Noble says that its Tablet is the fastest-selling Nook model it has released. Despite competition from the low end, IDC is predicting that Apple will have its best quarter of tablet sales ever. Price has become a big driver in the tablet market, IDC finds. The major challenge for the Android market comes when Amazon introduces, as many expect, a larger tablet in 2012. If they enter the 10-inch screen space with the same aggressive pricing and offer a $349 or $399 price, it forces the rest of the field to scramble, says Mainelli. “They would make life more difficult for the Android media tablet guys.” Amazon and Apple have content businesses that help support their hardware sales, while Samsung, Motorola and Asus do not. “The hardware-only guys need to figure out that it's probably not going to be a high-margin business and they need to tap into a successful ecosystem.” Mainelli speculates that the OEMs may partner with Amazon to get some piece of the media sales business.
More than 80 Web gurus warned Congress on Thursday that anti-piracy bills currently pending in the House and Senate could harm free speech and also undermine innovation by Internet engineers. The Stop Online Piracy Act (HR 3261) and companion Senate bill, the Protect IP Act (S. 968), would “create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation, and seriously harm the credibility of the United States in its role as a steward of key Internet infrastructure,” states a letter to Congress signed by Vint Cerf, known as the “father of the Internet,” Esther Dyson, and other Internet engineers and inventors. They warn Congress that “an incredible range of useful, law-abiding sites” could be blacklisted should the measures become law. “All censorship schemes impact speech beyond the category they were intended to restrict, but these bills are particularly egregious in that regard because they cause entire domains to vanish from the Web, not just infringing pages or files,” the letter states. The letter was published the same day that the House Judiciary Committee began marking up the controversial legislation, which was introduced in October by Reps. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), John Conyers (D-Mich.), Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Howard Berman (D-Calif.). The bill provides for court orders banning ad networks and payment processors from doing business with “rogue” sites -- defined as sites dedicated to infringement. The measure also provides for court orders banning search engines from returning certain results and orders prohibiting Internet service providers from putting traffic through to certain URLs. (Even if ISPs did so, users could still reach their destinations by typing in the numeric IP addresses.) Hollywood backs the bipartisan bill, arguing that it is needed to stop companies that are outside the jurisdiction of the U.S., and therefore need not comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's takedown provisions. But opponents -- including law professors, digital rights groups, Web companies and Internet engineers -- say the bill is problematic. They argue that it would result in censorship of legitimate material as well as “rogue” sites. Critics also say the law could discourage companies from hosting user-generated content. That's because the bill seems to curb provisions of the DMCA that protect companies from liability when users' posts infringe on copyright. Currently, the DMCA's safe harbors provide that Web companies are immune from liability for infringing clips posted by users, provided the material is removed at the owner's request. But the bill could require sites to more actively police user-generated content for infringement or run the risk of being labeled rogue. Cerf and the other Internet mavens who signed a letter to Congress argued that it was a mistake to tinker with the domain name system. “The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open Internet, both domestically and abroad. We cannot have a free and open Internet unless its naming and routing systems sit above the political concerns and objectives of any one government or industry,” the letter states. Another group of Internet engineers previously said that forcing ISPs to filter out certain domain names would be “minimally effective” and could “frustrate important security initiatives." On Thursday, several lawmakers urged their colleagues to hear from additional Web experts before voting on the measure. Rep. Dan Lungren (R-Calif.), chairman of the House cybersecurity panel, called the bill “somewhere between catastrophic and troublesome,” saying that it raised unanswered cybersecurity questions. Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who opposes the measure, argued that the bill would actually promote piracy by making the Internet less secure. Despite some lawmakers' calls for more information, Smith, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, indicated that he intended to bring the measure to the vote as soon as possible. As of Thursday evening, lawmakers were still debating the bill.
Understanding the context of users as they move through the day will become a key challenge for mobile media and advertising. PlaceIQ, a start-up that just received $4.2 million in Series A funding, says that “context” is more than just a DMA or a map of nearby businesses. It claims its ad-targeting technology creates a “hyperlocal digital index of the physical world,” by understanding not only what is there, but who is in a place, and when, and what they are doing. Mobile technology does not just allow marketers to target people in a given spot -- the same platform is also rendering massive amounts of data from people about what they are doing there. “We analyze all of the place data being created,” says Duncan McCall, CEO. Some of it is the static data about a geolocation -- but much is what people search for on their mobile phones in a given spot, and the ads click on mobile ad networks, etc. “We do it in 100-meter tiles. So we can understand the type of audience that is present and their affinity to behaviors, events or even an IAB segment,” he says. Says John Hadl, founder of BrandinHand, a mobile marketing agency he sold to FRWD and now a US Ventures partner, behind PlaceIQ's funding: “When you provide context you can create scalable targeted advertising.” Data points like events can be a powerful determinant of real-world context, adds McCall. McCall and Hadl say the data gathering and targeting exercise are entirely privacy-safe; it doesn't track people, but context profiles. The contexts have been built from inferences made about generalized, anonymous data. Targeting advertising is the first use for the contextual profiles. The company claims that in early trials, it saw a 118% increase in clickthroughs on an ad after using this targeting. But the data sets have other uses, both for mobile providers and other marketers. ProfileIQ is working with agencies to target places for appropriate out-of-home ad placements.
Kenshoo will move to integrate data from Covario Organic Search Insight and other SEO platforms to enable keyword-level analysis and optimization. It's part of the company's product road map for 2012, along with plans to bring check-in data into Kenshoo's platform to view alongside search and social, and compare online advertising with in-store traffic. Next year, Kenshoo also plans to add performance data to allow campaign management in an offline environment, improve paid-search algorithms to understand marginal impact of each customer interaction, and expand beyond Facebook to enable ad management across other social networks. The move signals a change in partnerships and collaboration among industry rivals to support search engine marketing and social media. Such changes convinced Michael McVeigh, vice president of strategic services at Zeta Interactive, a full-service marketing agency, to move $50 million in annual client budgets -- about 20 accounts. Historically, the agency had run campaigns on a proprietary in-house search engine marketing platform the company will "sunset." McVeigh said the move to Kenshoo's technology will better support clients, such as Sony and Hard Rock Hotel, through SEM and bid management services. Some agencies and smaller search companies that are focused on strategic planning, consumer insights and brand positioning can't keep up with the speed with which technology changes. They choose to shut down proprietary technology and opt in to programs offered by companies with more sophisticated platforms. McVeigh used descriptors like "laser focused" and "fast scaled" to describe Kenshoo's technology, which pushes out about 24 release cycles -- four major ones -- yearly. Making the commitment to technology requires a different organizational structure, said Aaron Goldman, Kenshoo CMO. "We have 150 engineers in Tel Aviv working around the clock to get things done," Goldman said. On the impact front, Kenshoo's technology serves up more than 4 billion Facebook ads weekly, more than 1 billion SEM ads delivered daily, and more than 1 million clicks and conversions tracked hourly. Aside from client search budgets, Kenshoo continues to attract top talent from companies such as Total Immersion, which focuses on augmented reality; and eBay, which provides online auctions and small business sites. Building out its social services and link with search engine marketing, Kenshoo Social supports Facebook ad and targeting formats and provides segmentation and cross-channel attribution through the Facebook Ads API. Behind this move, Kenshoo snagged Max Polisar of Total Immersion. Kenshoo named Polisar social vice president, sales; and Chris Knoch as Kenshoo social vice president of client services. Knoch joined from Ready Financial. This week, Kenshoo appointed William Martin-Gill general manager of Kenshoo Enterprise. He joins the company from eBay, where he served as director of global search engine marketing and managed the company’s global paid-search efforts and Triton platform. Before joining eBay in 2004, Martin-Gill spent three years with the Boston Consulting Group, where he and a team conceived and launched Orbitz.com. The company also appointed Ziv Oren CIO, joining Kenshoo from 888, an online gaming company; and Sarit Firon, who held the position of CFO at MediaMind.
Facebook Thursday began the formal rollout of Timeline, three months after announcing the feature replacing the old profile page that lets users highlight milestones in their life and post other status updates. Users will have seven days to review everything that appears in their timeline before anyone else can see it. It will go live automatically after seven days if someone to decides to wait. Brands can take advantage of the new feature by creating applications that allow users to say their “watching,” “listening,” or reading” something that can be included as a default action appearing in Timeline. They can also create custom apps for other actives like “running” or “cooking” that show up in Timeline when someone uses that app.
What a distance mobile has come since Apple launched the iPhone back in 2007. BlackBerry was dominant back in the day, and Android was just launching with Google. Apple and Google both evolved their platforms, the apps marketplace exploded and more consumers entered the world of the smartphone. We’re now talking to our iPhone 4S, asking Siri, the sometimes flippant digital assistant, life-pondering questions or map directions to somewhere. And we appreciate the irony that she uses Google Maps to do so. Now comes the latest iteration from Google and Samsung, the red hot Samsung Galaxy Nexus, running the all-new Android operating system Ice Cream Sandwich. There was a line to get one at our local Verizon Wireless store when they started selling them this morning. And the operating system is so new -- and different-- that our salesperson was not yet well-versed in the new features. About the same size as the other hot new phone, Motorola’s Droid Razr, the Galaxy Nexus makes the iPhone seem tiny. Not a complaint -- just an observation. The question a buyer will have to answer is: What size phone do they want to carry? As one of my smartphone-owning sons views it: “Is this phone just another thing in my pocket or is it the main thing in my pocket? ”Smaller than a toaster but bigger than a DroidX, the Galaxy Nexus is a very slick and very fast device that runs on Verizon’s 4G LTE network. The phone now runs the new Android 4.0 operating system, and if you’re already an Android user, this may take some getting used to. Aside from some fun new features, like unlocking the phone by facial recognition, the new operating system does things a lot differently -- many better. All keys are soft keys. The old double-tap of the home button, bringing up a (relatively useless, IMHO) mini view of the five available screens, is gone. The three clean keys at the bottom simply provide go back, home and a new recent apps key, bringing up the most recently closed apps. Very nice. So you, or anyone you might hand your phone to, can see, in order, everything you’ve been doing. Want to delete one? Just swipe right on one, and it’s gone. The button to open the list of apps, resembling the BlackBerry home key, opens the list of apps that now scroll horizontally rather than vertically, providing a much easier way to navigate if you have a large number of apps (guilty). If you use screen shots in presentations, Android finally has a feature to match the iPhone, so if you hold down two buttons on the Galaxy Nexus at the same time, the current screen is saved. There are countless changes in the new operating system, like widgets being moved to the app tray, NFC (near field communication) built in. Two similar phones back-to-back can exchange screen content with one tap and the Google search bar being displayed transparently on every main page, since the search button is excluded on the Galaxy Nexus. Marketers will appreciate the increased screen real estate and the LTE speeds for faster video downloads. For anyone getting a first smartphone, especially during the holiday shopping season, starting with the Samsung Galaxy will be starting at mobile’s new state of the art.
eMarketer this week reported that in 2011, adult consumers said they spent 65 minutes a day on mobile devices, versus 44 minutes with print media. Of that, all of 26 minutes was spent with newspapers, and 18 minutes with magazines. Since it takes 26 minutes just to hand-sanitize the newsprint off your fingers, one suspects that a good deal of newspaper reading is being done online. But I am old-school. Each morning I read the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and local Stamford, Ct. papers in their traditional dead-tree format. It takes about an hour and change, depending how much overlap there is in sports and crap simply not worth reading, like 14 ways to cook gefilte fish or the daily errant speculation on why the market moved up or down. In this way I am armed and dangerous with current facts and figures when discussion breaks out in the gym locker room about UConn basketball – or, at dinner parties, who will win the Republican primaries. Not that either topic interests me in the least. It’s hard to have a discussion on current events in a household where nobody else reads the paper. Unless their teachers bring it up in class or it involves a celebrity, my teenagers haven't a clue what goes in the world around them -- including their own little town. The only debt crisis to them is when the funds on their allowance-loaded cards are about to evaporate. (I have begged at every teacher meeting to involve newspaper stories in the curriculum, but to no avail.) But I am sure they would argue that between Facebook and their iPhones, they get all of the "news" they need or want. My family thinks I am unnecessarily compulsive about my newspapers, especially when I take over the family room on Saturday and Sunday mornings to tackle a few hours of Sunday paper reading (and yes, that often includes the ads and those dammed inserts/flyers). Oddly, on those few times I go on vacation and make a point of not reading the papers (including their online versions) my life somehow goes on pretty unaffected. Moreover, I have read the accounts of those who say that reading the news is utterly pointless and just creates unnecessary anxiety. But newspapers are more than just an anxiety-producing set of stories about events well beyond my control (and often, interest). They are the primary drivers of what I watch on TV, which new books I buy, which movies get on my "see" list (well,, that and my Flixster app), who I vote for, where I send charitable contributions, sometimes where I shop and how much I pay -- and well, yes, find out 14 ways to cook gefilte fish. I am a notorious clipper (pulled a recipe to try just this morning) and often pass along to others the online versions of stories I read during each day's morning ritual readings. Gotta say, all that takes a good deal longer than 26 minutes a day.