A digital media company -- Google -- ranks as the highest in terms of Madison Avenue’s overall brand perception for the first time in an annual survey of advertisers and agency executives. The results, which are being released today as part of the “What Advertisers Think About The Industry’s Highest Rated Media Brands,” is based on the opinions of more than 2,000 advertisers and agency executives polled by Advertiser Perceptions Inc.The ascendency of the Google brand name is a first for a pure play digital media company. Last year, ABC ranked as the No. 1 overall media brand in the minds of ad executives. In 2010, the first year of the study, Meredith ranked No. 1.Given its overall perception, Google’s brand not surprisingly also dominated the digital ad networks category with its Google Display Network scoring No. 1 in overall “brand strength,” though Tremor Media ranked No. 1 in “advertiser satisfaction,” Vibrant Media dominated “customer service” and the Meredith Women’s Network topped “sales knowledge.”ESPN had the greatest overall brand strength in the “digital content” category, while Facebook dominated the “digital portals and social” and “mobile” categories. Highest Rated Media Brands -- 2012: MEDIA COMPANY Highest Rated Media Company — Google PRINT Brand Strength — ESPN The Magazine Sales Knowledge — Cooking Light Customer Service — Martha Stewart Living Advertiser Satisfaction — Food Network DIGITAL CONTENT Brand Strength — ESPN.com Sales Knowledge — Bloomberg.com Customer Service — Economist.com Advertiser Satisfaction — People.com DIGITAL PORTALS AND SOCIAL Brand Strength — Facebook Sales Knowledge — AOL Customer Service — Yahoo! Advertiser Satisfaction — Twitter DIGITAL AD NETWORKS Brand Strength — GDN Sales Knowledge — Meredith Women’s Network Customer Service — Vibrant Media Advertiser Satisfaction — Tremor Video CABLE TELEVISION Brand Strength — ESPN Sales Knowledge — NFL Network Customer Service — The Weather Channel Advertiser Satisfaction — AMC BROADCAST TELEVISION Brand Strength — NBC Sales Knowledge — ABC Broadcast Daytime Customer Service — ABC Broadcast Daytime Advertiser Satisfaction — ABC MOBILE Brand Strength — Facebook Sales Knowledge — Fandango Customer Service — Jumptap Advertiser Satisfaction — Millennial Source: Advertiser Perceptions Inc.
Interpublic Group’s Draftfcb is undergoing a major reorganization, with its media operation shifting to sibling organization Mediabrands, the company has confirmed. The move, which comes amid a search for a new CEO, will enable Draftfcb to refocus its practice on core competencies, including creative, strategic planning, data management, CRM and digital. Mediabrands manages most of IPG's media assets, including its two big media shops, UM and Initiative, start-up media agency network BPN, research and negotiation unit Magna Global and various specialty firms. But the media operations of some of IPG’s full-service agencies like Draftfcb and Mullen have remained outside the purview of Mediabrands. Draftfcb has estimated total revenues exceeding $1.1 billion although the media business that is shifting from Draftfcb to Mediabrands amounts to less than $10 million in revenue. Now the Draftfcb media team of about 50 staffers, led by chief media officer Rich Gagnon, will be housed organizationally within Mediabrands. Gagnon, who had reported into Draftfcb, will now report to Shane Ankeney, managing director Initiative U.S. The reorganization is a work in progress. Still to be determined is how the Draftfcb media assignments will be divvied up among the three main media shops: UM, Initiative and BPN. Eventually, the Draftfcb media specialists will migrate to one of those agencies, depending on which client brands they work on. Draftfcb’s media clients include Merck, Boeing, Dow, Amtrak and Microsoft. Initiative already does buying for Merck and is expected to inherit Draftfcb's planning-focused media assignment for that client. Earlier, the two shops had shared the MillerCoors business, although the entire assignment migrated to Initiative last year. The basic idea behind the realignment per executives is to facilitate easier access by Draftfcb media clients to the full portfolio of Mediabrands tools and resources, such as the IPG Media Lab, trading desk Cadreon, Shopper Sciences and other specialty services. The realignment has been ongoing outside the U.S. In a memo to U.S. staffers today, Draftfcb Laurence Boschetto wrote the move would "formalizing our existing alignment between Draftfcb and IPG Mediabrands to further leverage the full power of Mediabrands’ resources for the benefit of shared clients. In effect, that means our media people at Draftfcb will continue to work on our integrated brand teams, but will operationally become part of IPG Mediabrands.” In the same memo, IPG CEO Michael Roth stated: “Since the creation of IPG Mediabrands, we've looked to deliver the benefits of media scale and innovation ... This move is an evolution of that strategy, which will allow the insights and expertise that IPG Mediabrands and Draftfcb bring to clients to be combined into an even more integrated set of offerings and capabilities.”The media realignment is the latest in a series of steps the agency is taking to bolster its offering. Last week, the agency announced that Javier Campopiano had been named chief creative officer at the shop’s New York office. The company confirmed in November that a search was underway to find CEO Boschetto’s successor. This story has been updated.
The advertising industry should brace for more acquisitions similar to those seen in 2012, according to John Kaiser, managing director at investment firm DeSilva & Phillips. Among the highlights: Dentsu acquired Aegis Group for nearly $5 billion; IBM paid $1.3 billion for Kenexa; Nielsen paid $1.2 billion for Arbitron; and Microsoft paid $1.2 billion for Yammer. While the first few months of 2013 may be off to a bit of a slow start, given the flurry of mergers and acquisitions in late 2012 for tax purposes, any shortfall early in the year will more than be offset as the year progresses, Kaiser said. "With expectations for a slow-growth economy, strategic buyers will pursue acquisitions for new revenue streams to achieve corporate growth objectives," he said. "Financial firms that raised substantial sums during the past five years will need to put the capital to work." Factors favoring M&A point to strategic and financial buyers with unprecedented amounts of cash and credit. Google states that as of Dec. 31, 2012, the company had unused letters of credit for approximately $89 million. This year, companies will attempt to remove waste in advertising and marketing through M&A. Marketers will become more proficient in integrating media channels and sifting through data to target consumers with relevant messages. Although there have not been many transactions in mobile, this will change as mobile becomes more valuable and the cost of ads rise, Kaiser said. Mobile and analytics were often cited as the areas to watch in 2012, but it’s expected that deal-making will span across digital creativity, social media, video, and marketing automation in the future.
Scoring the value of the Super Bowl XLVII these days comes down to advertising and searches, rather than scrimmages and touchdowns. This year, Experian Marketing Services created an ad relevancy model to determine ROI and ad value. Audi takes the top ad relevancy score of 167 when combining brand purchase behavior and the universe of brand user and Super Bowl viewer statistics, according to Experian Marketing Services. That means an estimated 67% lift in likelihood that someone will purchase from the brand when targeting the ad to the Super Bowl audience. The model estimates Audi spent the most "per likely buyer" of any Super Bowl advertisers, based on the price tag of more than $4 million for a 30-second spot and market size of potential buyers. Rescaling the ad relevancy score to take into consideration the number of likely buyers changes the outcome; it looks at the cost of the ad per thousand likely buyers reached. Budweiser, Best Buy, E*Trade, and Chrysler round out the top five spots, with ad relevancy scores of 133, 128, 125, and 124, respectively. Assuming each advertiser runs one 30-second spot, the top two brands at the lowest cost per likelier buyer reached are Coke and Tide. While Experian created a method to determine a brand's lift, Microsoft Bing analyses searches on its engine to predict the winning team. The San Francisco 49ers drive twice as many searches on Bing than the Baltimore Ravens, with the team's quarterback Colin Kaepernick leading the Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco by more than double the searches. The sports entertainment and marketing firm said its sponsorship evaluation division, Front Row Analytics, will evaluate ads in real-time and deliver results on its Twitter @FRAnalytics or #SuperBowl24hours. The analysis will span across Web sites, television, and social media, exposure received by the National Football League and Superdome partners, as well as broadcast advertisers.
Facebook Gifts, launched in September, allows people to buy and send each other smallish items through the social network from well-known brands and retailers. On Thursday the company introduced a reusable gift card that people can give to friends through the Gifts program for use at four partner companies: Target, Jamba Juice, Olive Garden and Sephora. After receiving a Facebook Card in the mail, subsequent card gifts will be automatically added to the balance for one or more of the participating stores. “Your card can hold multiple gift balances, and each balance is dedicated to the retailer associated with the gift. For example, you might have gift balances of $100 at Sephora, $75 at Target, $50 at Olive Garden, and $8.25 at Jamba Juice,” stated Facebook’s announcement today. People can see gift balances in their account settings on Facebook in mobile or on the desktop. A user will also get a notification when their balance changes through a real-time notification sent to their phone. The ability to send a Facebook Card will roll out gradually in the U.S. The social network first got into the gift card business in 2010, when it sold virtual credits through cards sold at big box stores like Target and Best Buy. Last year, the company did away with its own virtual currency in favor of a user’s local currency, whether dollars, pesos or yen. The aim was to give developers more flexibility and to benefit its own e-commerce efforts like Gifts. During the company’s fourth-quarter conference call Wednesday, CFO David Ebersman said Gifts, user-promoted posts, and paid messages amounted to only about $5 million in the quarter out of total payments revenue of $256 million. He added that non-games payments would remain very small through 2013, as the company focuses mainly on building out its advertising business.
Worldwide tablet shipments grew 75% in the fourth quarter to a record 52.5 million units as lower average selling prices, a wide range of choices and season spending drove up sales. Shipments were up nearly as much from the prior quarter as from a year ago, at 74%, according to new data from research firm IDC. "We expected a very strong fourth quarter, and the market didn't disappoint," said Tom Mainelli, research director, Tablets, at IDC. "New product launches from the category's top vendors, as well as new entrant Microsoft, led to a surge in consumer interest and very robust shipments totals during the holiday season.” Apple led the way with 23 million units shipped, up 48% from a year ago on strong demand for the iPad Mini and the rollout of the fourth-generation iPad. IDC noted, however, that Apple’s market share in the quarter declined to 43.6% from 46.4% in the third quarter, as Samsung and other competitors chipped away at the company’s dominant position. Samsung’s share doubled in the quarter to 15% from 7.3% a year ago, with combined Android and Windows 8 tablet shipments of 8 million. Amazon also had a strong holiday season, nearly doubling its share to 11.5% in the quarter while shipping 6 million tablets. Rounding out the top five were Asus, with 5.8% share on shipments of 3.1 million tablets, and Barnes & Noble, with 1.9% of the market and quarterly shipments of 1 million units. Asus actually saw its share slip from 7.8% despite promising shipments of the Google-branded Nexus 7 tablet. With the rollout of its two low-priced HD tablets last September, it gained some ground but remains a tiny player overall. As for Microsoft, its Surface with Windows RT tablet launched with much fanfare in October.The company ended up shipping 900,000 units in the quarter, leaving it out of the top five. “There is no question that Microsoft is in this tablet race to compete for the long haul. However, devices based upon its new Windows 8 and Windows RT operating systems failed to gain much ground during their launch quarter, and reaction to the company's Surface with Windows RT tablet was muted at best," said Ryan Reith, program manager, Mobile Device Trackers at IDC. He added that Microsoft has to adjust to the market realities of a smaller screen and lower prices to make any headway against its rivals. But it looks like Microsoft is going in the other direction. The Windows 8-powered Surface Pro, coming out Feb. 9, will sell for $899, compared to $499 for the Windows RT version.
Late last year, a federal judge dismissed New Jersey resident Maria Pirozzi's potential class-action privacy lawsuit against Apple. Now Pirozzi is trying again with a new complaint that offers more details about her allegations that Apple violated her privacy by allowing app developers to upload her address book and photos. Pirozzi says in her latest court papers that she has owned an iPhone since September 2011 and has downloaded numerous apps, including Angry Birds and Facebook. She says she "relied on Apple's reputation for safety" when she purchased the device. "Had plaintiff known that Apple designed the iPhone in such a way as to make these devices vulnerable to unauthorized access from third-party apps, plaintiff would not have downloaded apps and would have consequently paid less for her iPhone," she alleges in the new papers, filed in federal court in the Northern District of California. Pirozzi initially sued Apple last March, several weeks after developers first reported that the apps Hipster and Path surreptitiously uploaded users' address books. Soon after that report, other app developers were accused of retaining too much information. Those app developers, including Twitter, allegedly asked users for permission to upload their address books. (More than a dozen app developers are facing separate lawsuits for allegedly violating users' privacy by uploading and retaining their data.) In December, U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers granted Apple's request to dismiss the lawsuit, but ruled at the time that Pirozzi could add more allegations and try again. Rogers said that Pirozzi would have to show what type of device she purchased, which specific Apple statements she read before buying a device, which apps accessed her information and how she was harmed by any tracking. It's not clear whether Rogers will allow Pirozzi to proceed with the new complaint. While Pirozzi alleges that she downloaded Facebook and Angry Birds, she doesn't appear to allege that those apps accessed any of her information. Instead, she says that the apps "may have" downloaded users’ data without their explicit consent.
Barbara Lippert owes an apology to every single non-black Jamaican for implying that they do not exist! She has her head so far up her own... She isn't even educated enough to know that Jamaica is a country of many colors: people from Africa, India, European decent all claim Jamaica as their home and ALL speak in the same manner. This commercial is as racist as the outback commercials... Both impersonate (rather poorly) a different country's dialect. I don't find the add very funny nor creative... But it has nothing racist about it! The above is a snippet of one of the more polite notes of the hundreds I’ve received since Monday morning, when I appeared on the “Today Show” to discuss the early release of VW’s “Get Happy” Super Bowl commercial. The spot, a cross between “Cool Runnings” and “Office Space,” shows unhappy white dudes (and for some reason, one Asian guy) in short-sleeved white shirts and ties, glumly hanging around their soulless workplace, all with a case of the Mondays. “You know what dis room needs? A smile,” Dave from the Gopher State tells his colleagues, lit-up and gesturing during a downer of a meeting. “Who wanna come wit I?” That sounds funny, granted. But I said I didn’t like the way “black people” were used to infuse happiness into uber-white people. That’s what brought on the letters, mostly from Jamaicans or friends of Jamaicans or people who like to vacation in Jamaica. And unlike the letter writer above, they mostly found the spot funny. The “Today Show” subsequently put up a poll on its Web site to determine whether viewers found the spot offensive. About 93% of the voters did not. I was told I was uptight, a dumbass, and too P.C, among other things. That’s what makes a ball game. Still, I’d like to apologize for the gross imprecision with which I spoke. I should have made a distinction between Jamaican and “black.” Jamaica is an island with a beautiful mosaic of residents of every stripe and background. The Jamaican patois and culture is associated with fun and friendliness and "irie" (no worries,) not color. I’m sorry for my mistake. Secondly, I realize that a word like “racist” is way too important and inflammatory a term to throw around when discussing a Super Bowl commercial featuring a positive Jamaican vibe, even if it’s a stereotype. More precisely, I should have said that I found the device of using the Jamaican voices coming out of Minnesotans too contrived, and racially insensitive. I also found it weird that not one African-American was included in the office. Why? And while obviously surprising and memorable, the voice thing put me in mind of the whole Jar Jar Binks controversy from “Episode I: Phantom Menace.” Another character with a Caribbean accent, Binks was a clumsy, loud, comic foil. It also reminded me of the time (granted, long ago) in advertising when typically, big, older black women were the only ones who were allowed to express emotion. There was an AT&T commercial in the 1970s featuring just such a woman, crying, because her son called to say he loved her. Look, I’m know I’m just a white lady from New York. And parts of the commercial were funny. I loved when the guy said he came from “De lahnd of ten tousand lakes.” There’s a wonderful moment when the guys are in the Beetle, the Jimmy Cliff cover of the Partridge Family song, “Get Happy” is playing, and the spot begins to make sense, because the Beetle is a happy car. The teaser, with Jimmy Cliff, was terrific. But then the whole awkward division between uptight white guys and Jamaica comes back when they pull into a spot and another white bureaucrat says “You’re late!” It’s too bad the whole commercial wasn’t shot with everyone singing inside the car -- it would be so much less jarring. It’s certainly not going to be the worst commercial at the Super Bowl (if it runs.) Not even in the bottom 20. But it’s certainly not up to VW’s past standards, like “The Force.” But really, any car can advertise that it makes you happy. And I found it bizarre that there is zero link, and even a vigorous disconnect, to a German car company, still touting German engineering. That’s about as far as you can get from “irie.” Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
By now you are probably already exhausted by Super Bowl advertising, and the game isn't for a couple more days. In an effort to squeeze every ROI penny out of the nearly $4 million, 30-second spot cost (not including the creative expenses), advertisers are working overtime to create multiplatform ways to interact with their brands, other than just sitting back and letting their ad interrupt an otherwise perfectly good football game. We in the business have been obligated to read all about these exploits as if we were tracking the spread of an Ebola virus or witnessing a new kind of marketing arms race. Most of us have already seen the spots, thanks to the claim by (who else?) YouTube that "ads released before the Super Bowl generated more 9.1 million views on average, compared with 1.3 million for those appearing online the day of the game." We have also seen the "rejected" ads designed never to run, but rather to create some sort of viral buzz around the injustice of being "turned down" by CBS. There are now 12,000 (and counting) ways to vote for your favorite Super Bowl ad, as if the fate of the free world was somehow hanging in the balance. The old-fashioned notion of "if it works, it will move product" seems to have been replaced by "if they like it, we will get some press and maybe win an award." What had been a three-hour football game has now turned into a week-long media frenzy. The few important or intelligent questions about the game are dispensed with in the first 15 minutes, leaving 167.75 more hours to fill with addled ex-players paired up with sumptuous network eye candy to leaven the dead air with moronic trivia about New Orleans, past games or idiocies about the players slated to perform. Any minute I expect Henry Blodgett to post cell phone photos and a critique of the check-in procedures at the Maison Dupuy Hotel. Having been to a couple of Super Bowls, I can say with confidence that if you have ever written a check to buy even 10 seconds of network advertising, you will be buried by an avalanche of the most excessive display of food and drink imaginable. Had that same food been smorgasborded during Katrina, everyone living in the Superdome would have left five pounds heavier. With the possible exception of the 1984 Ridley Scott ad for Apple's Macintosh, I am hard-pressed to recall an ad that premiered on the Super Bowl and ended up in the Madison Avenue Hall of Fame (that Mean Joe Greene jersey in exchange for a Coke ran a few months before the Super Bowl). In fact, I am hard-pressed to remember most of them from last year. Was Betty White last year or the year before? Clint Eastwood? Who knows or cares? With most of the ads already out there, since 95% of all Super Bowl games have been deathly dull, there is, I suppose, little to no point in even watching it. Then again, there is that Kaepernick kid.
“In the future,” Andy Warhol famously said, “everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” Well, that future has already come and gone. We now live in the next future -- the one where everyone pays attention for 15 seconds. Fortunately, today’s ultra-connected consumers are equipped with the perfect technology for on-the-go people who have short attention spans: mobile devices. Mobile devices that pack unbelievably strong sensors. Touchscreens, cameras, microphones, GPS, compass, gyroscope -- and wireless Internet. Combine all that with speed, sleek handsets and always-on, running-in-the-background capabilities and what do you get? For starters, you get a new computing model. You also get a total revolution in the media-cultural-social-economic atmosphere. t’s changing how we live. How we work. How we socialize. How we communicate. How we shop, learn, have fun, and even how we think and feel and perceive. The era of the four-hour, widescreen epic is over. The day (or nanosecond) of the “flash fact” presented on a handheld screen is here — whether it’s a tweet or an app or a digitally delivered news headline. Question: how can a “flash fact” possibly be worthwhile? And by consuming an endless series of flash facts on our mobile devices every day, are we just gorging ourselves on empty content, high-calorie candy -- when we really should be consuming more long-form, deep-content vegetables? Actually, no. Flash facts can be just as nutritious as long-form media. Why? Because long-form media creates its own context. Today’s mobile media figures out what’s going on in your life and makes you the context. Let me explain. Do you know the difference between trivia and an important fact? You guess it: context. Suppose you’re in the middle of Times Square. Somebody remarks that you can make an improvised compass from a needle by magnetizing it. Who cares? It’s meaningless trivia. But if you’re lost in the woods and all you’ve got is a needle, suddenly that same fact becomes a lifesaver. It is extremely valuable information -- “significa.” Popular mobile devices present bite-sized chunks of information. But great mobile platforms present those bites at just the right time, and just the right place, in just the right way to be useful to you, with your specific tastes, habits, preferences, friends, history and location. Rain expected later today in the Midwest? Who cares? But rain expected at 1:45 pm on the corner of 33rd and Madison, which is exactly where you’re going to be in 15 minutes? That’s useful information. The future of mobile media content is fun, friendly platforms, apps and programs that deliver situationally-aware, hyper-personalized, bite-sized facts (preferably told in pictures) to individual consumers at precisely the right moment. Content is king. But context is queen.