• by Ken Liebeskind , May 22, 2002

StreamingFlash Flood by Ken Liebeskind It’s easier than you think to run your TV commercials on the Internet.

Maybe you’ve seen those press releases from companies such as PepsiCo touting the online debut of the company’s latest spot. Pssst — Pepsi’s just making it look hard. In fact, commercials are getting easier and easier to stream onto the Internet, and perhaps just as importantly, they can be streamed into almost any new ad-size unit available. That includes standard banners, skyscrapers, and even email.

Atlanta-based Eye Wonder, which touts itself as a provider of "instant streaming," claims that 40% of the company’s clients stream commercials into more than one format. Saab recently used banners, large units, and email; Diet Coke, a large banner and a small letterbox. The company has also worked with Cadillac, Doritos, and Ralston-Purina, which uses the technology to stream one of its ads into a skyscraper at its www.Tidycats.com site. Bluestreak, a third-party ad server and streaming provider, also streams ads into different formats and has done so for AT&T, Nike, Universal Pictures, ESPN, and Coca-Cola.

Advertisers use multiple formats for a number of reasons, such as the fact that all publishers don’t accept all sizes. There are also budgetary considerations, since it costs less to stream a commercial into a smaller unit. Banners, for instance, are often used "to make sure they blanket their target audience," says Mike Griffin, Eye Wonder’s senior vice president of sales and marketing.

The ability to stream into email may hold particular potential for an audience that has already expressed interest in the product; typically, the commercials are streamed into HTML email and clicked to view.

Mark Toffoli, vice president of sales for Destiny Media Technology, which makes the software used by Klipmart to stream television commercials, says HTML is the key; as long as an ad is HTML-based it can be streamed into any online format. Advertisers can also decide how intrusive they want to be by either having a commercial play automatically as soon as a page loads or making playing the ad permission-based.

The ability to stream commercials into any format is causing rapid growth in video streaming, according to Paul Palumbo, spokesman for Accustream iMedia Research. He says there are 75 million avails per month for video streams now, compared with none a year ago.

CRMHow Clean is That List? by Amy Corr Online advertising evangelists such as Tom Hespos have recently begun a crusade against renting email lists. "We think there’s something wrong with using email to interject our clients into somebody else’s marketing relationship," Hespos wrote in a recent Online Spin. "While we do rent a list from time to time, I’m trying to steer clients toward developing their own email lists, populated with people who have directly opted in to receive communications from my clients."

A noble undertaking indeed, but many agree that it will take a long while for old dogs to learn new tricks. Until that day comes, advertisers will continue to rent and buy email lists, forever wondering if the addresses they’re getting are any good. There are no auditing companies that specialize in email, so what are some basic things to watch out for?

Brent Livingston, President of Ezine Manager, a list management company that tracks everything from bouncebacks and unsubscribes to dormant rates, says that while email auditing is off to a good start, more needs to be done, especially when it comes to tracking dormant users — people who have not logged in to an email account in a certain period of time. "Some companies rent lists where dormant users are a major part of the list," he says. "Up to 50% of a list can be bad."

Updating the lists, however, is a daunting task, especially if you’re PostmasterDirect.com, which has 51 million opt-in names. Much like Ezine Manager, PMD monitors and deletes email addresses of dormant users, as well as undeliverables — emails to addresses that bounce back to the sender.

But they take it one step further. To authenticate addresses, PostmasterDirect uses a double opt-in feature. According to Mike Mayor, president and COO of NetCreations, PMD’s parent company, there is a 50% drop-off between the people who fill out the initial opt-in form and those who respond to a follow-up confirmation email. Only confirmed opt-ins make it into the database, which helps maintain list accuracy.

Making sure your marketing messages don’t go to dormant users, bad email addresses, or people who don’t want to hear from you may sound basic, but until the email industry comes up with mandatory auditing guidelines, it’s the first — and only — line of defense against wasted dollars.

WirelessWireless Carriers Want Teens by Amy Corr Let’s do some quick math. According to various researchers, the average teenager has an estimated $4,000 in annual discretionary income. Multiply that number by the estimated 34.6 million young adults in this country and you get nearly $140 billion in spending power. Factor in about 32% of American teenagers who own cell phones and the end result is a potentially attractive target market for wireless advertisers. Before ad dollars start flowing, however, wireless companies have quite a bit of work to do to expand that market. Here’s what they’re currently up to: Verizon Wireless, the nation’s largest wireless operator, has been spotted running ads on MTV, FOX, and the WB Network, promoting cell phone text messaging to teens. Verizon is also sponsoring a nationwide amateur basketball competition called “NBA Hoop It Up,” where prizes go to those cell phone users who answer trivia questions the quickest via text messaging.

Cingular Wireless is also pushing hard to reach the coveted teen population. Besides running campaigns on teen-targeted TV stations, Cingular established a presence at several spring break venues, such as Daytona Beach, offering special promotions, and even bought billboard space in more than 1,000 high schools that allow advertising on premises. “We want to do everything we can to attract this target audience because they offer us long-term growth opportunities,” says Greg Roberts, Cingular’s director of marketing and national promotions.

Additionally, Cingular recently launched a fully integrated marketing campaign centered on Columbia Pictures’ May 3rd release of Spider-Man. For starters, fans of the film could buy the Sony Ericsson T60 series handsets and limited-edition Spider-Man faceplates. Cingular was also offering exclusive Spider-Man ring tones, alerts, and trivia games to celebrate the comic book hero’s jump to the big screen. The campaign was hailed as one of the most ambitious ever for a wireless carrier in conjunction with a Hollywood movie.

And to round out the top three, Motorola is using Oscar nominees to plug its newest product, the V70 phone, a cell phone with a rotating cover and circular display with a translucent keypad. The V70 will be available in May for $400, but Oscar-nominated actors and directors were given phones just in time to walk down the red carpet with them and make mention of them during pre-awards ceremonies.

iTVTiVo-lution May Finally Be Here by Lee Hall Back in the ’70s, the poet and social commentator Gil Scott-Heron had a hit with his song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." But right now it’s looking as if Gil might have had it backward. Today the popular refrain in media circles is "Will the Television Not Be Revolutionized?" and TiVo, the newest digital gadget, which allows users to watch any show, any time, seems set to join the VCR, remote controls, electronic program guides, and DVD as the harbinger of the next paradigm shift.

People who have TiVo — or one of its competitors in what generically is the "digital video recorder" (DVR) category — say they love it. Who wouldn’t? The ability to take near total control of what you watch on television, and when, can be very appealing. TiVo cites its own research showing that 97 percent of users recommend it to friends. Problem is, there just aren’t that many users out there (about 400,000 at last count), and the company has been in existence since 1997.

As with any new technology, TiVo and its rivals, such as SONICblue’s ReplayTV, Microsoft’s Ultimate TV, and a DVR option offered by EchoStar’s Dish Network, face the daunting task of educating a television public regularly inundated with claims of the latest and greatest. The company simply hasn’t had the money to stake its claim. Until now.

A couple of recent moves may begin to accelerate TiVo toward the critical mass necessary for it to turn a profit, and, in time, become a household word. The company recently expanded its marketing arrangement with DirecTV, the national satellite service that boasts some 11 million subscribers, and with Best Buy, the country’s biggest consumer electronics retailer.

Murray Arenson, an analyst who covers TiVo for brokerage house Morgan Keegan, credits the company for transferring the massive marketing burden to its vendors who have the muscle to get the word out. It’s a smart move that Arenson believes will help get the product in front of more faces.

Although DVRs have yet to set the marketplace on fire, the threat of consumers’ being able to watch television programs whenever they want — and skip over the commercials in the process — should send shivers up the spines of TV executives, advertising executives, and advertisers alike.

So far, you may have noticed that one weapon for battling this emerging trend is the pursuit by some broadcast networks of "repurposing" arrangements. NBC, for example, said last month that it would place next-day reruns of Late Night with Conan O’Brien on Comedy Central. ABC has put some of its programming on two cable networks in which it has a stake, A&E and Lifetime Television. AOL Time Warner networks, including The WB, TNT and TBS, carry various programs from sister channels.

For now, repurposing seems to make sense. It can draw a larger aggregate audience. But when viewers catch on that they can watch their favorite prime-time program the next day on another channel, how are the networks going to persuade advertisers to pay those outrageously high ad rates based on big prime-time audiences?

If DVRs like TiVo do take off, network repurposing would become moot as viewers simply "TiVo" programs and watch them on their own schedule. Keep an eye on this. When "TiVo" becomes a verb, you’ll know it’s really made it. The technology and content opportunities are developed. Programmers are receptive to incorporating these applications into media packages. Media buyers are seeking opportunities to enhance the creative aspects of media buys. Marketers are receptive to exploring new media opportunities that offer potential for future return-on-investment.