Last year, more than 4.8 trillion display ads were served online, according to a new ad campaign breaking today by online ad network operator Undertone, adding: “How many do you remember?” To make sure you remember it, Undertone isn’t using the medium it pitches to advertisers and agencies -- it’s utilizing television. In an unusual media buy for a B-to-B marketer aimed at a relatively small industrial audience, Undertone has purchased two 30-second spots in tonight’s season premiere episode of AMC’s “The Pitch,” a new reality series about agencies competing for an account pitch. Granted that a higher-than-normal share of ad industry executives are likely to be tuning in to the AMC series, but Undertone is likely to generate some buzz simply from the fact that it is utilizing TV to pitch an online ad platform aimed at a relatively small audience of media buyers. The exact CPM of the buy may not be calculable, as Nielsen data doesn’t break out viewers in terms of the industries they are employed in, but it is likely to be pretty pricey in terms of relative reach. Undertone did not disclose what it was paying for the two 30-second TV spots, but AMC generally sells “The Pitch” in packages based on three airings -- the original, plus two repeats -- for about $56,000. Assuming Undertone paid those rates, the TV campaign will cost the online ad purveyor more than $100,000. If it is successful, it will live up to its branding promise -- “Standout and be remembered” -- but it will have done it by using television, not the online media it pitches advertisers to use. In fact, the TV commercials go out of their way to point out how forgettable online ads actually are.
Toyota has been reaching out to 20- to-34-year-old consumers with its new Prius c small hybrid car. Part of that effort has involved a month-long relationship with social media channel BuzzFeed.com. On Monday, BuzzFeed ran a Prius c-themed home page takeover, the first such auto-themed campaign on the site. But instead of banner ads and skyscrapers that live beside BuzzFeed content without having much to do with it except for complementary demographic targeting, the Prius c-branded elements were portals to high-volume BuzzFeed content with a metaphorical theme around "most-charged" stories. BuzzFeed's home page always has a series of content buttons on top labeled "LOL," "Win," "OMG," "Cute," "Geeky," "Trashy," and "Fail." For the Prius takeover there is one more -- one that resembles the Prius "start" button, and it directs visitors to the "Viral Feed" page of the most viral stories, as well as Prius' own content. The site's Viral Stats Bar, also Prius c-branded, looks a bit like the car's dash readout of a battery-charge icon. The bar takes you to BuzzFeed's array of live graphs that show social-media lift on BuzzFeed stories. There is also a Prius c-branded section on the right side of the page, "Most Charged Content," showing a series of quirky stories. Jon Steinberg, president at BuzzFeed, tells Marketing Daily that the idea is to drive front-page marketing with the right content. He says there has been strong pickup on the stories -- one is called “The 20 top hybrid animals,” which he says has gotten 2,000 Facebook shares, and 100 tweets. "The thematic idea is that Prius c is bringing you the most charged content,” says Steinberg. “We first did this kind of program with Pepsi Next, where you could 'next' your way through viral content. It has to be a theme that makes sense." Each "Prius c" branded banner takes visitors not to the Toyota Prius c static page but to the car's YouTube channel showing creative from the "Game Of Life"-themed TV campaign, and Web-only videos on the car and how to navigate buying it at the dealership.
Snack Factory’s Pretzel Crisps is making its first foray into branded video content with two different approaches from two different agencies. One -- “One Snack” from GeniusRocket -- is 90 seconds in its full format on YouTube, and shows three women enjoying the flat pretzels in a variety of ways (plain, with healthy dips and veggies, etc.) as they go through their daily activities. In the vignettes, the women dance and sing to a hip-hop-inspired song (“There’s only one snack … Pretzel Crisps”) throughout. The other video – “Meet Carl, the Pretzel Crisp,” from Tongal -- introduces a new brand mascot, a talking flat pretzel who does card tricks and impressions of his friend Roger (among his other riffs) … working in along the way that Pretzel Crisps are the healthy snack food that can be enjoyed either alone or with accoutrements. Both videos target Pretzel Crisps’ core consumer base -- women 25 to 49 -- and both, in addition to being offered in long versions on the brand’s YouTube channel, have been cut into shorter versions for pre-rolls on various targeted sites (particularly video-driven sites), Pretzel Crisp VP of marketing Perry Abbenante tells Marketing Daily. Both videos were launched around National Pretzel Day, April 26 (although “Carl” had a soft release on YouTube two weeks prior to its official release). The “One Snack” video on YouTube, posted on April 24, has thus far drawn nearly 2,400 views. The full “Meet Carl” video, posted April 11, has drawn more than 700 views, while the various shorter versions posted a week ago are starting to gain traction. (“Carl Trying to Lose His Accent” currently has about 400 views.) In addition to being used in site display ads/pre-rolls, the videos are being promoted on the brand’s Facebook page (which currently has nearly 250,000 “likes”) and its Twitter account (more than 5,200 followers). “We wanted entertaining branded video content that would help us build on our social and online communities, and also lend itself to conveying our brand message in both earned and purchased media, for cost efficiency purposes,” says Abbenante. “The two video crowdsourcing agencies each produced a very different, but very compelling, concept. So we’re employing both. The beauty of this content is that we can continually track how each video and each purchased ad unit is performing, and make changes very quickly as necessary.” Pretzel Crisps also ran a “Got an App for That? Pretzel Crisps Appetizer Contest” prior to National Pretzel Day, when the winners were announced. Starting March 19, entrants submitted recipes and photos to the Pretzel Crisps Facebook page in six categories (sweet, spicy, meat, veggie, cheese and bacon). An internal panel of judges chose 10 finalists per category to move onto the final voting stage. From April 12 to 23, the brand’s Facebook fans voted online for their favorite pairings. The six vote-determined winners received a year’s supply of Pretzel Crisps, a “Got An App For That?” recipe book featuring their creations, and $1,000. The winning recipes are being featured on the brand’s site and Facebook page. In addition, both channels featured a limited number of free, downloadable coupons around National Pretzel Day. Pretzel Crisps’ leveraging of digital marketing has been among the drivers of its continuing, strong sales growth. The brand’s dollar sales for the 52-week period ending March 18 were up by a whopping 95.7%, on top of a 66% gain during the 52-week period ended April 17.
IgnitionOne will unveil features Tuesday to its Digital Marketing Suite (DMS) that allow marketers to compare multiple attribution profiles from the Analytics section of the tool. Each attribution path will show the credit attributable to media, such as display, search, video and social ads. The tool allows marketers to test attribution profiles that are not based on the last-click model. It also gives marketers better insights to determine the best attribution profile and to enable them to make it actionable with automated optimization. "If your attribution strategy is only looking at conversion data, you are missing out on 97% of the information available," said Eric Carlyle, SVP and knowledge architect at IgnitionOne. "Pay attention to media that helps drive the often-ignored middle funnel. This can be made possible by optimizing media that drives engagement in addition to conversions." Carlyle said other than giving credit to multiple exposures, there are other aspects of a sophisticated attribution model that marketers must manage. The ability for marketers to prioritize one channel over another is important. Marketers may undervalue the media driving the acquisition if it leads to someone signing up for an email, for example -- which takes the credit on a last click. With tiering, a select channel could get credit regardless of the path. Attribution becomes increasingly complex as more media becomes part of the mix. George Michie, CEO at Rimm-Kaufman Group, outlined the barriers to understanding attribution and provided an example of attributing each touch to a winning point in Game Seven of the NBA finals. He asked during last week's MediaPost Search Insider Summit whether credit goes to the player in-bounding the ball to another player, or to the player who shot the ball through the hoop. Michie also asked how marketers deal with a change in trusted metrics relied on for years as online advertising matures and changes. Year-over-year performance numbers could start to decline dramatically, and remain down for nearly a year with the change of an attribution model that now takes more than one media channel into consideration. It becomes a reality that display advertising could weigh down the performance and return on investment of search campaigns, explains Tim Schaeffer, search engine marketing (SEM) manager at Zappos.com. "There is no choice; you have to attribute," Schaeffer said, explaining how to present it to company C-Level execs. "This is the future -- sink or swim. It may make your numbers look worse, but that's reality. Your competitors are doing it, and they will beat you if you're not using the right attribution." Too many marketers look at attribution as an afterthought, or don't take into consideration that several forms of media contribute to the overall positive or negative effects. Some marketers believe companies need to design an organizational structure to support the technology, which Forrester Research labels as immature. In a Forrester Wave report published Monday, Forrester points to five of the more than 60 vendors as having strong methods and tools. They include Visual IQ and ClearSaleing, followed by GroupM, Adobe, and Convertro. Forrester defines attribution as the "measurement of the partial value of each interactive marketing contact that contributed to a desired outcome." In the past three years, the technology supported by companies like Adobe, Adometry, C3 Metrics, ClearSaleing, Convertro, Google, IBM, and Visual IQ has been greatly improved.
Hi folks, The Digital Content NewFronts seem to have sparked a debate about whether -- and how fast -- TV dollars will flow to the Web. Today we’ll hear from one prominent Internet entrepreneur who believes Web dollars will actually flow into TV. After that, we’ll assess the aftermath of last week’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the future of video migration. Then, more unnamed sources weigh in on Hulu’s TV Everywhere talks, and finally: Revision3 is in talks to be acquired by a major media company. Why Web Dollars May Actually Flow to TV Forbes’ Rob Hof has an interview with Simulmedia CEO and MediaPost Online Spin writer Dave Morgan about where he thinks television dollars are headed in the future. Perhaps the most surprising claim made by Morgan, who co-founded 24/7 Real Media (bought by WPP Group) and Tacoda (bought by AOL), is that online advertising dollars will flow into television, and not vice versa, as companies like Google and Facebook have hoped. Simulmedia, which is an ad network for television, is also announcing a $6 million round of funding from previous investors Avalon Ventures, Union Square Ventures and Time Warner Investments, which brings its funding total to over $27 million. Morgan reveals that the company didn’t need much money because it is already close to profitability. How is that? Morgan explains: “Where online ad networks permitted a reduction in the pricing of impressions, because they made more impressions more accessible, we can increase the value of advertising for networks and operators by applying more data to an industry that has a finite and relatively controlled inventory volume.” Because of this, he says not only are TV dollars not going online -- digital dollars are headed for TV. Next Steps Unclear Following Senate Hearing on Internet Video What -- if anything -- did the Senate Commerce Committee hearing last week about video migration achieve, asks Multichannel News columnist Gary Arlen. While the notion that the 1996 Telecommunications Act needs to be updated is certainly true, there’s no way Congress is going to start the arduous task of reform so late in the term. Arlen adds that the hearing didn’t provide any definitive plans for next steps, either -- in fact, a Committee staffer said he was unsure about how the Committee plans to follow up. Equally “perplexing” was the fact that a rather large constituency -- big media -- was uninvited to the Senate hearing. Media and telecom giants will obviously have a huge say in any eventual legislation, as will other government agencies like the DOJ, the Pentagon and the FTC and FCC. Ultimately, Arlen says all that was really achieved by the hearing was to open an official record about the competitive value of Internet video, and to put a marker in the ground that says we’re in the midst of historic change. Thanks, Senate Commerce Committee -- we knew that already. Source: Hulu's TV Everywhere Discussions are About Fox Content Only As it turns out, TV Everywhere-style authentication may only be coming to Fox content on Hulu, Mashable reports, rather than to the entire online video service. Late Sunday, The New York Post cited unnamed sources who said that the joint video venture from News Corp., Disney and Comcast would be moving to a more authentication-heavy model, and that this was part of the reason Providence Equity Partners decided to sell its stake in Hulu back to the media owners. But now, Mashable sources claim that the talks only involve certain programming; one of the sources said the discussions were mainly about Fox signing more cable and satellite providers into its online system. Of the three Hulu owners, News Corp-owned Fox has certainly been the most bullish when it comes to restricting content to cable and satellite providers. Last fall, the network began limiting next-day access to its programming to Fox.com, allowing Verizon and Dish Network subscribers to log in and view next-day content while others have to wait eight days. Fox’s current agreement with subscription-based Hulu Plus allows next-day access to most of its content -- although for some shows, such as "The Simpsons," Hulu users must authenticate a subscription service with either Verizon or Dish Network. Sources: Discovery Channel to Buy Revision3 Citing multiple sources, TechCrunch is reporting that video content provider Revision3 is looking to sell itself to The Discovery Channel. One source puts the price tag at between $30 and $40 million, and said the deal would close as soon as this week. Revision3 posted an ad revenue gain of 53 percent in 2011, although no numbers were disclosed -- and a video view increase of 359 percent, to 800 million views. It also reported a subscriber base of 4.5 million on YouTube. The Discovery Channel, which touts itself as the #1 nonfiction media company in the world, hasn’t been able to translate its analog success to the Web. “So the match seems to make sense,” TechCrunch says.
While new-media/technology business plans and elevator pitches have forever salivated about how television was a $70 billion market ripe for disruption, actually television advertising cracked the $70 billion mark for the first time in 2011, up 5% from 2010. That’s right, folks: TV advertising is getting bigger, with no sign of slowing down. The reality is that the hyper-fragmentation of audiences is making television’s mass media appeal more enticing to advertisers. After all, as a wise man once told me: “Targeting is overrated; everyone buys soap.” Considering that the Internet’s main promises are targeting and tracking, that’s a bad omen. In fact, you can almost argue -- no matter how reluctantly -- that the Internet, social media, tablets etc., are helping television grow. I watch more TV today than I have in the past ten years, even though I may occasionally have multiple screens on when I do. Indeed, according to Nielsen, "45% of tablet owners watch TV and use their tablet together at least once a day. A whopping 69% say they do so at least several times a week and only 12% say they never do this," writes Frederic Lardinois in TechCrunch. In other words, while we’ve certainly seen a shift of consumer mindshare from print, radio, and yes, television to the Internet, the jury isn’t only out on whether the Web helps or hurts television, as of now, the jury has rendered its verdict: the Web is definitely helping. There’s no doubt that growth rates favor the Internet. Online video advertising in the U.S. grew from $1.4 billion in 2010 to $1.8 billion in 2011 -- a more than respectable 29% annual growth rate. Total online advertising in the U.S. grew 22%, to $31 billion. Meanwhile, TV advertising grew 5% to $70 billion. But therein lies the problem: my company’s revenues grew 75%, but the absolute number remains rather light, so getting over-excited about growth rates alone is disingenuous, doing a disservice to everyone hoping for the pie to grow to the point where it can feed everyone. That applies equally to content producers and distributors, albeit in different ways. It’s pretty clear that distribution is a winner-take-all sweepstakes (or rather, top two or three). But it’s almost more daunting for producers as a whole at a time when cheap technology and “filterless” distribution lead to a democratization of publishing. The bottom line is that the online video pie’s not growing fast enough. This column has highlighted the reasons for that underwhelming trajectory: overreliance of in-banner ad distribution; lack of good content with meaningful distribution; the difference between what users watch, distributors feature and marketers want to associate with; lack of funding for content; massive oversupply of ad inventory pummeling prices, etc. If you reread that list, it sounds very contradictory. But what the Web lacks and was/is television’s ace, perhaps, is programming. After all, the reason why you both have a lack of good content with meaningful distribution AND an oversupply of ad inventory pummeling prices is specifically due to the difference between what users watch, distributors feature and marketers want to associate with. Only if you program the content better do you create the kind of economics and environment that will make advertising work online. Of course, given the democratic nature of the Web, that might be impossible. In March, for example, the number of video ads doubled annually to 8 billion -- thanks in no small part to YouTube -- but viewers are pleading “no mas, no mas” as is. This is why so many in the ecosystem hope that branded content will emerge as a viable form of advertising, but that will only occur if the content and advertising are balanced by the viewer’s standard.