Nevada's tourism challenge is not boosting Sin City, but Nevada itself. The problem is that most people think the former is the landing strip for the latter. A new campaign by communications firm Burson-Marsteller and BuzzFeed is about changing that perception with a digital road show involving two BuzzFeed editors tooling around the state, reporting on different attractions and general Nevada must-sees. The effort includes tweets, video and images of such things as Nevada's ghost towns and ski resorts. Michael Bassik, chair of U.S. digital practice at the agency, says the campaign's limited budget required a rather imaginative approach that wraps interactive ads around the editors' travels. "We looked back at research from TNS that shed light on the effectiveness of their previous online ads." He says the agency found that the effectiveness of their efforts had begun to decrease as time went on. "We could no longer rely on banner messages alone to determine that an integrated campaign was necessary." That meant partnerships with content providers who would marry content with ad opportunities. "We selected BuzzFeed as a partner because we had envisioned a perfect marriage of paid content and advertising working with a story of Nevada reaching a target that includes younger travelers," he says. There are a number of other sites but, among them, BuzzFeed is the only one working to produce original content to surround the ad experience, per Bassik. The ad buy for the interactive portion includes sites like TripAdvisor.com, the Weather Channel and a roster of travel and other Web sites, as well as sites for young children that also cater to moms making travel plans. "The beauty of BuzzFeed is the percentage of people there who share content elsewhere," says Bassik. "And there are thousands of others who have visited the content and shared that content with their social network. Also, BuzzFeed shared that content on their own social channels." Burson-Marsteller designed the ads, and Burson-owned Proof Integrated Communications did the digital elements, including interactive banner ads. Bassik says the agency is in talks now to take it to spring and summer. "Ultimately, we measure ad effectiveness based on tourism revenue per ad dollar spent."
Extending more promotional spin from the CBS-CNET controversy, Dish Networks has placed a print ad in major newspapers touting an award for its Hopper set-top box that it almost received.The Dish Network says "Dish Hopper Named Best In Show*: 2013 Consumer Electronics Show." It then goes on to explain the asterisk: "What is an asterisk doing in our award?"The ad reads: "CBS will go to any length to keep you from enjoying ad-skipping technology -- even to censor its own writers and throw out their decision to name Hopper Best in Show. Your vote is the only one that matters."The Dish Hopper ad also ran on Dish's Web site.Nearing the end of the Consumer Electronics Show, CBS' CNET Web site named the Hopper one of the top five consumer products -- and was going to give Hopper the top honor.CBS put a stop to the potential award, claiming that because of its ongoing legal action against Dish, it was stopping the review of Hopper. CBS called the move an "isolated and unique incident." Other networks have also started up legal action against Dish Network.In the wake of this, a CNET writer resigned.
This was the week of not quite apologizing enough. Lance Armstrong appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Network to explain 20 years of cheating, lying and cruel personal destruction of his truthful critics. He repeatedly said he was sorry for his conduct, but left the distinct impression that he was sorry mainly for getting caught. And his claim that he did not force his teammates into doping, among other continued denials, sounds like a crock. Notre Dame linebacker Manti Te'o named the supposed hoaxer who created the fake Lennay Kekua persona who e-romanced the football star before tragically dying, and even before actually living. Te'o's story can be proved or disapproved in about 5 minutes with a peek at his cell phone records, yet university officials have not been curious enough to look at them. Nor did they refute two years of false stories about the star-crossed lovers until at least a week after learning of the hoax. Yet the most shocking non-apology apology was buried in the avalanche of coverage about the disgraced athletes. The true disgrace belongs to Atlantic President M. Scott Havens, whose memo to colleagues about the magazine's ill-conceived online advertorial from the Church of Scientology fails just about every test of honesty, judgment and simple common sense. First some background: A week ago, theatlantic.com published an advertorial from the Church of Scientology titled “David Miscavige Leads Scientology to Milestone Year.” It was, ahem, as advertised -- a rundown of the organization's many bright accomplishments. The story did not mention its history of violence, psychological abuse and fraud, but did squeeze David Miscavige's name into 12 of the 15 paragraphs. There were only two details in the layout that distinguished this puffery from actual Atlantic editorial: a sans serif font for the headline, and two words in a small yellow box above the headline reading: "Sponsor Content." Otherwise it looked exactly like everything else on the site. For good measure, reader comments critical of Scientology were eradicated. Eventually, journalists noticed the advertorial and shamed Atlantic into taking it down. The magazine offered an initial mealy-mouthed apology, followed four days later by Havens’ memo. Permit me to empty some of the larger pails of hogwash. We ran a “native advertising” campaign for a new advertiser that, while properly labeled as Sponsor Content, was in my opinion inconsistent with the strategy and philosophy for which this program is intended. “Native advertising?” Euphemisms almost always mean to sugar coat the distasteful truth. It was an advertorial. He should call a thing by its name. Furthermore, it was certainly not properly labeled. Basic journalism ethics demand that such material be published in a way to distinguish it completely from the editorial matter surrounding it. That means different body font, different headline fonts, different column width, different everything -- plus the words “paid advertising supplement” printed prominently and often. Quite simply, we did not have clearly established digital advertising guidelines and policies in place, and when you're innovating in a new territory without standardized guidelines (we're not alone in the industry on this issue, by the way), mistakes can happen. Quite simply, that's bullshit. The determination not to trick readers is in no way “new territory.” In pixels or in print, the rules concerning advertorials have been etched in the canons of ethics for decades. There is nothing about digital publishing that would render any of those rules obsolete. To be clear, our decision to pull the campaign should not be interpreted as passing judgment on the advertiser as an organization. Oh, is that so? True enough, this would have been a sleazy stunt whether the advertorial were for Doctors Without Borders or Toys for Tots or sunshine. But why in the world would Atlantic take money from the Church of Scientology, which shares all the worst qualities of a cult, a Ponzi scheme and a sadistic security state? Why would any legitimate news organization forge a business relationship with an entity that has spent decades denouncing, stalking, harassing, suing and otherwise threatening authors and news organizations courageous enough to document its sordid activities? It seems fitting to quote one of our founders, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who once said “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.” Noted, Scott -- so what would Emerson have to say about this sorry episode? First you failed, then you rose up only to equivocate and snivel. What a craven memorandum to end a week you characterized as “a little rocky.” I must say, there's no evidence you are a little Rocky. You seem for all the world to be a little Lance.
Two years ago, I published the 10 lessons I've learned about online video in my five years of heading my company. Today, in my seventh year, we'll touch on the seven most important realities we face moving forward. Google acquires YouTube and pulls it off. Google's made a lot of good, bad and ugly acquisitions. While some would consider Android or Doubleclick as its best one, I think the decision to acquire YouTube will over time give Google the one-two punch in search and video that it has long sought to diversify away from the AdSense juggernaut. As a content partner to YouTube, we’ve seen the site's mishaps and mistakes firsthand, but none have been fatal. Net-net, it has executed quite admirably, navigating the confusing online video landscape better than anyone could have expected. Aol resurgence thanks to 5min acquisition. When we signed deals with the three portals -- Yahoo, MSN and Aol -- it became clear that the portals all had a lot of work cut out for them to position themselves for online video. While all three have improved considerably over time, Aol gets the highest marks for the biggest improvement (more like transformation). The credit goes to Tim Armstrong for moving quickly on 5min as well as 5min founder Ran Harnevo for navigating in the usually political and racing-against-time climate at Aol. Today Aol is arguably one of the best0positioned media companies in new video, with 5min as the cornerstone. Big media loses out. Now to be fair, one reason why Aol ranks amongt the best-positioned online video companies is because it hasn't been challenged by old media players, which put their sloppy seconds and leftovers online, using video as a promotional vehicle and auxiliary revenue platform. Big media manages to build a new media player in Hulu. That being said, big media proved that it can get out of its own way and build a successful platform. In fact, Hulu isn't just the byproduct of one media company, but three (two initially: FOX and NBC, with a third -- Disney -- joining later). While there's a lot of uncertainty around Hulu's future, the company won't disappear into the sunset. Networks disrupting one another. Some display ad networks have begun to morph into media companies (Specific Media now owns MySpace, for what it's worth). Others are moving into video (Undertone) via acquisitions or product moves. The video ad networks have managed to scale, but eroding margins have forced them to become exchanges, ushering in the birth of programmatic buying with the explosion of RTB. Tech is a commodity. While Google leveraged its superior tech to build the world's greatest ad business, few companies have managed to emulate this move. To Facebook, for example, tech is a means to an end. In online video, tech is a commodity -- YouTube is the leader, but its core asset is the audience. It’s the YouTube community that manages spam, makes things go viral, etc. The tech is an afterthought. Online video is a global business. And speaking of YouTube's community, the massive global audience it has accumulated over the past eight years has fostered a truly global business. The barriers to entry for MTV (for example) to become a global business are far more considerable than they are for emerging brands like Machinima.
As we reported in various ways last week, media buyers are coming into 2013 with a special jones for the tablet platform. Deloitte predicted that this would be the last year the ad industry would lump smartphone and tablet advertising together as “mobile.” And ad exchange platform MoPub reported that eCPMs for tablet advertising were accelerating. It all makes sense, of course. Closer to the visual scale of desktop but in a more personal and touch-enabled format, driven by strong e-commerce conversions, this should be an advertisers' playground. That momentum only increased late last week when IPG's media forecasting and research group Magna Global revised its overall ad-spending projections. While Magna now expects virtually all major media to be under pressure this coming year -- including TV in a post-Olympics and post-election year -- overall Internet spend is still above the usual cycles and projected to gain 14.2% in the U.S. But in the course of making that prediction, Magna EVP and Director of Global Forecasting Vincent Letang singled out the power of the tablet in the new multi-screen ecosystem. His comments are worth quoting at length because they position the tablet squarely apart from “mobile” advertising as we tend to conceive of it thus far. "The concept of mobile advertising started with smartphones but tablets are changing everything, rapidly establishing themselves as universal media players (TV programs, movies, radio, news, magazines) in a way never achieved through 'personal' computers. By their versatility and user-friendliness, tablets are increasing digital media usage and redefining social media, online video and e-commerce. Their influence will be felt far beyond on-the-go media usage as a growing proportion of that happens in the home. Part of that usage is cannibalizing media time spent on desktops and laptops, but tablets bring incremental media exposure, partly through multitasking. This new environment creates new opportunities as well as challenges for marketers and media owners. Despite the complexities in the ecosystem, the difficult upgrade of media measurement and the painful redefinition of many business models, Magna Global believes we have only scratched the surface of this new world.” He goes on to predict that the mobile category overall will reach $11.5 billion in ad spend by 2017, amounting to 18% of digital spending and 6% of all ad spend in the U.S. The actual behaviors around tablet use bear close scrutiny, because as the screens become more portable I believe we will see their role as personal media portals only grow and morph. They will move more freely around the house and become identified with at-your-fingertips information in a wider range of contexts (kitchen, garage, bed). I suspect media companies should consider not only optimizing their content for tablets, but actively pushing their visitors toward those experiences precisely because they tend to be more engaging and more likely to be used at the point of need/desire/inspiration.