At a time when Madison Avenue seems to think all-things-digital, advertising awards curator The Gunn Report has assembled a visually powerful reminder that print media is more than just dead trees. The aptly titled “The Power of Print” report organizes the best of the best from more than 15 years of breakthrough creative ideas that could only resonate in print media, including magazines, newspapers and out-of-home. The report, which ironically is available only in digital form (download it here), is an emotionally engaging showcase highlighting everything from TBWA\Chiat\Day’s iconic “Think Different” campaign for Apple (see accompanying image) to provocative public service efforts like the barcoded tiger depicted in Tiger Trust’s “Sale Must End” campaign (see below). “In bygone days, good agencies invested considerable time and money in the training and education of their young people,” the report explains, noting: “Nowadays, alas, this has largely gone by the board - thanks to lower margins, fewer people and, as [TBWA Chairman] Jean-Marie Dru expresses it about delivering work ‘the move from a quarterly to a daily cadence'." The report organizes print’s best cases in 13 formats ranging from informational to dramatized.
Google on Thursday released three reporting and optimization tools for retailers using the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite aimed at supporting Shopping Campaigns. The tools satisfy a trend in search engine marketing aimed at serving up fewer ads yet increasing conversion rates and average order values. Higher click-through metrics no longer prove better conversion rates or a campaign's success. It really comes down to finding ways to use data to improve results while spending less of the overall budget. The Adaptive Shopping campaigns creates product groups based on similar conversion rates. To create focused product groups with similar conversion rates, DoubleClick Search (DS) can monitor the Merchant Center feed and automatically subdivide existing product groups by product ID based on the performance of the products in each group, per Google. The company believes subdividing product groups provides the best bid optimization results. Google has found that 90% of the cost for median-size advertisers comes from only 9.5% of its products. Advertisers often lump these high-spend products into bid groups with other, low-converting products that lead to un-optimized bid values based on relative performance. This feature aims to give the most popular products or stock keeping unit (SKU) the correct bid by creating product groups for each item earning high traffic. Bid optimization for Shopping allows marketers to apply a bid strategy to an entire campaign or to individual product groups, and to set bids using near real-time conversion information. The bid strategy works with any goal except Position. Having the ability to access the correct data can make the difference between losing the entire budget and achieving the highest possible return on investment. So Google designed a feature that gives marketers information on purchase details. The tool digs deeper into the data to provide insights into the items purchased in each transactions. The reporting feature will let marketers see the total revenue gained and units sold of each product in the company's inventory, along with the campaigns, product targets, and keywords that contributed to the sales of those products, per Google. Knowing what consumers spend their money on has become just as important as what people look for and how they make their decisions. It all contributes to optimizing campaigns and serving up the correct information.
One of the co-inventors of the original Apple Macintosh, Marc LeBrun, has joined the video ad company Vungle to lead its engineering team, which has more than doubled since January. Si Crowhurst has also joined to head the company's new creative optimization group from London. "It's a great opportunity to have an influence on mobile apps and high-performance video, and working with developers to co-create and invent the future," LeBrun said. With a caveat on how quickly technology changes, LeBrun said he will work on building a structure to help developers of app frameworks work more closely with those who create ad content. He said don't think of an ad as a foreign object inserted in an app. It's part of the collaborative, co-creation process, and will support the work he will do for what the company calls Vungle Labs. LeBrun's work had a major impact on the world by building a bridge across consumer technology. "When I look back on the Mac, I don't want to spend time patting myself and the team on the back, but rather look at all the other things," he said. "We intended to make computers useful, but somehow there were a lot of missed opportunities. It was a great start, but how about all these other things." One of those "other things" is the available resources, tradeoffs and decisions that might make things smaller and less functional or more expensive. The group had to adapt to hardware and software limitations -- a challenge that LeBrun will overcome at Vungle as he works to build out the company's video advertising products and services. "There are more opportunities for computer systems to model the user, such as when you reach for something it's already placing it in your hand because it anticipates the need," LeBrun said. Computers have yet to use computing power to its full advantage. Rather than come up with the next great software package, developers need to start thinking differently, such as how the industry defines a mobile app. "Today, we tend to think of apps as an entertainment experience, but there's no reason we can't turn an app into an educational experience or empower the user through a social connections,"LeBrun said. "Then we ask what's an ad? An ad is content put into a framework that can dynamically associate with the query or the task." During his 40-year career, LeBrun has worked with companies ranging from start-ups to Fortune 50 companies, most recently serving as engineering manager for search and advanced data services at Tagged.com, and prior at Adobe Systems as principal scientist for advanced product development. As an authority on signal processing and mathematics, he has worked on the staff of several top researchers, like Stanford, MIT and Xerox PARC, and received the prestigious George Pólya Award from the Mathematical Association of America.
The outlook for the smartphone market is a bit better than it appeared earlier this year. That’s according to the latest forecast from research firm IDC, which estimates worldwide smartphone shipments will increase 23.8% in 2014 to about 1.25 billion. The research firm in February had projected shipments would grow 19.3%, and in May raised that figure to 23.1%. The strong growth in emerging markets is helping to offset the slowdown in mature ones like the U.S. and Europe, where smartphone shipments will only grow 4.9% this year after recent years of double-digit gains. By contrast, emerging markets -- spanning countries like China and India -- will see a 32.4% surge in shipments as consumers snap up low-cost devices. Still, even that rate is below the 38.4% growth for the entire smartphone market in 2013. "The smartphone market, which has experienced runaway growth over the last several years, is starting to slow. Mature markets have slowed considerably but still deliver strong revenues with average selling prices (ASPs) over $400,” stated Ramon Lamas, research manager with IDCs mobile phone team, in the release. Smartphones in emerging markets, meanwhile, typically sell for less than $250. More affordable phones mean higher sales. IDC expects smartphone volume in emerging markets to rise to 920.8 million, or 73.5% of that total. Android devices remain the catalyst, projected to account for nearly nine in 10 (88.4%) smartphones shipped in high-growth regions. The research firm estimates some 150 phone manufacturers support Google’s Android platform, driving its proliferation. Android-based phone makers -- especially Samsung -- also helped lead the shift toward larger screens. In that vein, IDC projects so-called phablets (smartphones with 5.5” to 7” screens) will more than double to 32.2% of the market in 2018 from 14% this year. Apple will help to drive that increase with its expected introduction of an iPhone model featuring a 5.5-inch screen next month (along with a 4.7-inch screen model). “Apple has the ability to drive replacement cycles in mature markets despite the slower growth,” according to IDC. "Smartphone user in China" photo from Shutterstock.
Streaming video company FilmOn is appealing an order holding the company in contempt and directing it to pay around $150,000 in sanctions and legal bills. FilmOn, backed by billionaire Alki David, filed the paperwork this week to appeal U.S. District Court Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald's ruling to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. Buchwald held FilmOn in contempt last month, ruling that the company violated a prior court order by continuing to stream broadcast television programs after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that FilmOn's rival, Aereo, infringed copyright. FilmOn doesn't state in court papers what its grounds for appeal. But FilmOn's lawyer, Ryan Baker, argued in a hearing in Manhattan last month that FilmOn isn't infringing copyright because it has applied for -- and thinks it's entitled to -- a compulsory cable license. Buchwald rejected that argument and fined the company $90,000 -- $10,000 per day for each day it operated after June 28, when Aereo suspended service. She also ordered FilmOn to pay attorneys for the TV networks around $56,000 -- which was less than the $101,000 they had requested. “Our decision to reduce the fee amount is based on our view that what may be a reasonable sum to charge clients for attorneys' services is not necessarily equivalent to a reasonable fee to compel a losing party to pay to its adversary,” she wrote in an order slashing the fees. The contempt dispute marked the most recent battle in a fight dating to 2010, when a coalition of broadcasters first sued FilmOn. That case resulted in an injunction prohibiting FilmOn from infringing broadcasters' copyrights. At the time, FilmOn wasn't using the same dime-sized antenna technology as Aereo. But after Aereo emerged, FilmOn said that it too would use multiple antennas to capture and stream over-the-air broadcasts. The broadcasters said that both companies infringed copyright by publicly transmitting programs without licenses. Aereo and FilmOn argued that their multiple antenna system offered “private” performances, because the streams were made on an antenna-to-user basis. A lawsuit by broadcasters against Aereo went to the Supreme Court in June. That court ruled that Aereo resembled a cable system and therefore couldn't transmit television shows without a license. After that decision came out, Aereo and FilmOn revised their positions. They now argue that their live streams don't infringe copyright because they're “cable systems” and entitled to a compulsory license. But Buchwald said in her order that FilmOn “attaches far too much importance to the Court’s analogizing.” She wrote last month: “A series of statements that Aereo (and, by extension, FilmOn) ... is very similar to a cable system is not the same as a judicial finding that Aereo and its technological peers are, in fact, cable companies entitled to retransmission licenses.” Aereo, also, is trying to convince judges that it's now entitled to a cable license. The company is expected to file new court papers on Friday, asking U.S. District Court Judge Alison Nathan in Manhattan to rule in its favor on that question.
Meredith, Net2TV To Launch BHG Streaming ShowMeredith Corp. is partnering with Net2TV to launch a new streaming on-demand TV show, based on the Better Homes and Gardens brand. The new 30-minute program, which premiered August 27, will air twice a month and is available to viewers with Internet-connected televisions. The "Better Homes and Gardens Show" is hosted by Jackie Tranchida, who hosts NBC “First Look,” who will introduce viewers to BHG’s expertise in areas including cooking, decorating, home improvement, entertaining and gardening. It is being distributed by Net2TV’s Portico TV service, which reaches around 30 million screens including smart TVs from Samsung, LG, Sharp and Philips, Roku-connected TVs, and Toshiba tablets and notebooks. The shows are also available at www.portico.tv. BHG Editor in Chief Gayle Butler stated: “Better Homes and Gardens helps its audience live more colorful and creative lives, and our highly visual content translates beautifully into compelling television.” Meredith Vice President For Video Productions and Product Laura Rowley added: “Better Homes and Gardens, which has more than 2 million Facebook fans and is one of the most-followed brands on Pinterest, inspires connection and conversation about personal style. Bringing our highly desirable female audience full-length, streaming TV shows that she can enjoy at home whenever she wants is an important extension of our strategy." Meredith has been focusing on ramping up its video offerings, beginning with the creation of Meredith Video Studios and the opening of its Studio 22 unit in 2011. MVS’ flagship production is "The Better Show," a nationally syndicated daily lifestyle program. Condé Editors Grumble Over Lack of Input on Video While most magazine publishers are embracing digital video, the trend is giving rise to internal discord over who, exactly, gets to set the editorial direction. At least that seems to be the case at Condé Nast, where many of the company’s leading editorial lights feel left out of decision making on the high-end publisher’s video strategy, according to a report in Capital New York. Citing unnamed sources within the company, CNY said Condé editors believe the business side has dominated video production, resulting in “spotty,” “off-brand” or just sub-par content. Examples included GQ’s first slate of programming last year, which was felt on the editorial side to be off-target for the magazine’s brand. CNY quoted one insider: “It doesn't make sense for video to be outside of editorial control. The brands control everything else, so why not this very important thing?” Lump Named Travel + Leisure Editor Nathan Lump has been named editor of Travel + Leisure magazine effect September 8, succeeding Nancy Novogrod, Time Inc. announced this week. Lump previously served as director of branded content at Condé Nast, following a previous stint as digital director at Condé Nast Traveler. Before that he was the leader of content strategy at J. Walter Thompson and Hill Holliday, where he was recognized with a 2010 OMMA Award. This is actually Lump’s second time working at Travel + Leisure: from 2000-2006 he held several editorial positions at the magazine, including features director. Lewis Tapped As Cooking Light Editor Also this week Time Inc. announced that Hunter Lewis has been appointed editor of Cooking Light effective Sept. 22, succeeding Scott Mowbray, who is retiring after 17 years with Time Inc. Lewis previously served as executive editor of Time Inc.’s Southern Living. Before that he was food editor at Bon Appétit and kitchen director for Saveur. He has also collaborated on a number of cookbooks, including Chef Jonathan Waxman’s "A Great American Cook" and "The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook" by Matt and Ted Lee. Playboy.com Gets Makeover Playboy Enterprises has unveiled a new design and content approach for Playboy.com, covering areas including entertainment, nightlife, style, humor, sex and culture, all optimized for the Web site’s growing mobile audience. The relaunched site includes new features like “The 100 Sexiest Movies of All Time,” “The Complete Playmate of the Year List,” and the “The Playboy Bar: The Ultimate Cocktail Garnish Guide,” among other things. Playboy Media chief operating officer and president David Israel stated: “The new Web site, which is being fueled by our enormously engaged social media audience, provides a powerful new venue for advertisers, all with an infrastructure that is designed expressly for the mobile user."
Americans lag behind their Asian and European counterparts when it comes to online shopping, according to a study from Nielsen. They tend to research their purchases online (63%), look up reviews (63%) and find online shopping convenient (78%), but they are hesitant to pull the trigger and actually make their purchases online. Asia-Pacific has the highest online buy rates -- China and South Korea are leaders in cosmetic products and groceries. Western Europe leads the way on CPG E-Commerce -- Britain has increased to $91M in Q1 2014 from $70M in Q1 2013 and France has increased from $32M to $42M in the same time period. Compared to a similar study that Nielsen conducted in 2011, there are significant jumps in certain categories. Americans are now more open to buying in certain online categories including airlines, electronic equipment, ebooks, music and clothing/shoes. For airline reservations, 43% purchased in 2014 versus 19% in 2011 and hotel/tours -- 43% in 2014 versus 16% in 2013. Electronic equipment rose to 31% in 2014 versus 15% in 2011 and ebooks climbed to 35% in 2014 versus 11% in 2011. In the music category (non-download) purchases rose to 31% in 2014 versus 18% in 2011. Finally, purchases of clothing and shoes rose to 43% in 2014 versus 35% in 2011 There are several reasons that Americans are not more open to shopping online. Some 46% said they don’t like to buy online because of shipping costs, and 37% of Americans said they don’t trust giving their credit card information online. The good news for brick-and-mortar retailers is that Americans still say we prefer going to retailers in person to buy our products. We will research online, but we still like to purchase in person, particularly for consumable products such as personal care, health and beauty, food and beverage, pet food and baby supplies. Sixty-three percent of American respondents said they like to read online reviews before buying a product, and 63% of American respondents said they often look at products online before purchasing them in the store. The takeaway for retailers is that they can’t afford to ignore their consumers online -- online browsing and research is extremely important to consumers who often do the research legwork online before going to their local retail outlet. “While online transactions make it easy to download a book, buy a ticket to a sporting event or book a hotel room, building a consumer base for consumable categories requires more marketing muscle,” said John Burbank, president of strategic initiatives, Nielsen, in a release. “Finding the right balance between meeting shopper needs for assortment and value, while also building trust and overcoming negative perceptions, such as high costs and shipment fees, is vital for continued and sustainable growth.”
I weep for the magazine industry -- although I don’t really sympathize with its plight. Ad pages are dwindling relentlessly as money gushes to digital. Over the years at our many shows we often ask media buyers where they expect to get the money to invest in emerging platforms like social, mobile, video, etc. “Print” is almost always the most common answer. Not only that, but it is said with a slight tone of mean satisfaction, as if they are exacting a small revenge on a medium they have been waiting to shrink down to size for a while now. The infamous Mary Meeker media time spent vs. ad spend chart pretty much exposes the soft underbelly. Print garners 5% of our media attention, but still attracts 19% of spend. That is a gap hard to justify -- no matter how hard you rationalize the prestige and impact of a print ad. The real problem, of course, is that for magazines especially, the Internet was unwelcome in so many ways. First, the always-on editorial cycles were anathema to magazine staffs, workflow, souls. It took almost a decade for them to adjust after so many promises that they really “got” digital. No -- really this time. Worse still, the authoritative, top-down, aspirational nature of magazine culture was unprepared and temperamentally ill-suited for the hyper-democracy of online metrics feedback and social media. The new authority of the user represented a full assault on the authority of the trend-setting medium. People read magazines that always aimed above their own means and station. I covered the magazine industry for over a decade as it made this painful shift in sensibilities. I can tell you that simple things like blogging and responding to readers were not welcomed by most magazine staffs as late as 2006. And the time-spent metrics for magazine properties online were downright depressing when compared to print. Most dedicated mag readers are with each issue up to 70 minutes a month. Compare that to the 10-15 minutes that most sites might accrue from countless sessions per user each month and you can see why many people in the print industry clung so desperately to those inflated page rates. I could go on…about their trouble adapting to competition with TV media and endemics, having to grow a video strategy, and struggling with aggregators, including Google. There have been so many missteps and challenges for these guys. There have been some successes -- especially in social media, where the value of their brand and niche communal feel pay off especially well. And now they are trying to make sense of themselves on mobile. Several high-profile brands relaunched recently with adaptive designs that feel mobile-first: NewYorker.com, RollingStone.com, and Playboy.com. Each in its own way tries to revive the strong magazine design sense that a decade of browser hell killed online. The New Yorker is careful to use the typeface, headlining, and cartoon illustration we identify with the magazine. What I like about their execution is the emphasis on the reading experience. They are trying to make the handheld read easier on aging eyes. Alas, the all-important cartoon rendering on a smartphone is lacking. Captions are microscopic and the art itself really needs to fill the screen. And please, please, publishers everywhere -- put in a snap-back button to get your user back to the top of an article easily. RollingStone.com mixes up the usual one-column feed layout to keep the eye moving laterally as well. Like Playboy.com, which bolts sharing tools to the bottom of the screen, RS hijacks the usual browser interface. You can sense in these publications their zeal in banishing the navigational gadgetry and tech garbage that has been with us since Netscape. The result is not always pretty, making users hunt for familiar nav buttons and forcing the user to learn a slightly new interface. But it is understandable that magazines want to push social sharing. Their content does very well in this ecosystem and shows how the value of brand still matters. A lot of magazine sites still don’t’ have their AV in order. I would think that slide shows would be a core competency for the medium that marries text and image so well. but the gallery interfaces at both Playboy and RS don’t scale well to the smallest screen, often forcing long captions into tiny scroll boxes. It would be nice to think that mobile gives magazines another at bat in a digital game most have been scrambling to stay in. After all, weren’t magazines the original portable media? Didn’t they perfect niche media, cultivating deeper relationships with readers than just about any other form? The magazine may be considered a “proto-app” in that it crafted a unique user experience not only from words and images but typeface, interface, design, flow and pace. This was the medium that invented the phrase “Dear, Gentle Reader” at the turn of the last century, signaling a turn towards targeting and personalizing the audience in media -- a road that lead eventually to mobile. It would be nice to think that the magazine media is the one historically best positioned to go mobile. But a decade and a half into the digital revolution, it is still unclear whether -- and how -- one of the great media passions of the last century will survive this one.
Content may be king, but the future of media buying in a digital world will be based on audience, not content. In the historic world of analog media, driven by printing presses, broadcast licenses and cables on poles, media distribution was scarce and audience attention plentiful. In that world, content of just decent quality was virtually certain to deliver a lot of audience attention because the true leverage point in media was the control of scarce mass distribution. However, in the digital world of media emerging today, which is driven by digital bits and Internet Protocol delivery, distribution is plentiful. It is audience attention that is scarce. The most extraordinary content today can’t predictably deliver the kind of share of total consumers delivered by newspapers, magazines, radio or TV over decades past. Even the broadband Internet, with its massive reach, isn’t even available in one-third of U.S. homes; that’s about a hundred million consumers it can’t reach. People in the U.S consume much more media today than ever -- but it's ever-more-fractured and granular bits of content across ever more fragmented devices and channels. In this world of audience fragmentation, the foundation of marketers’ media strategies will have to be built first on finding, aggregating and communicating with specific people, not funding specific content. Without the attention certainty that monopoly distribution played in analog media, it won’t be good enough in the digital world to base the foundation of a media strategy around picking great content. Media buying will look more like requests for very specific types of consumers, and the content or context will become much more secondary. In fact, as has happened in search and online display, media buying overall may become much more about looking for specific types of audiences and specific desired results, and content and context might fall entirely out of the order. Yes, many say that this method is how good media planning and buying has always been done. However, those of us who live and do business in this world day in and day out know that there is an enormous chasm between what some people say they do and what they actually do. Does a future like this mean that content will no longer matter? Of course it doesn’t. For companies who want to sell valuable audiences to marketers, content will matter even more. That’s why television and video content companies are delivering such great financial results these days. In this attention-scarce media world, those who can deliver audiences at scale are in a great spot. However, as fragmentation continues, content will become less and less critical to marketers, seen more clearly as a means to an end in the ad media world, not so much the end itself -- the role it largely enjoys today. What do you think? Will the future of media be founded -- and defined -- primarily by audience, not content?