• The Future of Media is Activity
    The future of media is activity. For far too long now media and advertisers have littered the web with ads around the experience that don't work. The future is focused on what people are doing, not where they're doing it. Most importantly, advertising based on people's activities works - outperforming standard display ads by a double-digit multiple. Today, activities include sharing content, checking-in and setting statuses, collecting, sending and earning virtual goods, polls and contests, and completing a level within a game, to name a few.
  • Emotion as a Contextual Targeting Tactic
    The transactional nature of the mobile platform is well known among today's marketing community. What's lesser known about mobile marketing is the enormous opportunity it presents to engage with consumers on an emotional level. At Pandora, where 70 percent of the music we stream goes to a mobile device, we operate in this context every day. One of the most evocative, ever-present and highly accessed form of content is music. Radio, the original "mobile app," reinforces how music is a part of everyday life as people could, and still do, listen to music everywhere there's a signal: at home, …
  • The Future of Media is a New Kind of Content: Author Driven
    Until about five years ago, there well established three-step approach to any media business. First, an Editorial team developed content and establishes a brand to attract an audience. Second, that audience was built through promotion and distribution. And finally the audience was monetized with a combination of advertisements, subscriptions, and/or direct sales. This approach - to have editors assemble and create content to attract an audience to a destination, could be called editorially driven content. Media companies built brands, and editors were the stewards of the audience.
  • The Future of Media in the Era of the Highly Engaged Consumer
    The future of Media won't center on the next generation of formats (though undoubtedly we'll see new formats continue to emerge). It's not about local, mobile, or social either. Media's future requires a true redefinition of its role, objectives, and level of accountability in the era of The Highly Engaged Consumer. While consumers are busier than ever, they also are more heavily engaged. They're on their mobile devices day and night. And one thing is clear - when they are researching a specific product or service from these devices, they are ready to buy. These consumers research a …
  • Mobile Future
    The future of media is mobile. The tablet wars are heating up and mobile access to content means there is an opportunity for marketers and advertisers everywhere to engage with their audiences wherever they are. Mobile enables them to turn what were traditional conversations with traditional media into meaningful dialogues and connections with audiences. It adds a level of personal connection because it's a mobile device, the device consumers want to be contacted on.
  • The Fast-Paced Future
    In the few days since I was invited to write this, Google Plus went public, Facebook announced Timeline, Amazon debuted its tablet, Fire, and its cloud-based browser, Silk, and the IAB reported ad spending on the Internet grew by 23% in the first half of 2011 compared to last year. The pace and scale of change in media we are witnessing is difficult to fathom, much less summarize in a few hundred words, but let me highlight three important trends:
  • Potato-Chip Media. Just Keep Eating
    There was a funny article in the Onion a while back, "New Us Quarterly To Explore Celebrity Issues In More Depth", about how Us Weekly's editorial calendar didn't provide the time for real in-depth analysis. Funny, sure? Sad, maybe? But it tells a real story: the future of media is the triumph of short form content and the birth of emergent forms of storytelling. Long form content is dying because we like short form content. In fact, the shorter the better: continuous niblets of novelty to stimulate our brain's reward centers. Don't make a video over 45 seconds. …
  • Consumer Driven Future
    One doesn't need to gaze to deeply into the crystal ball to see that the future of online video is consumer-driven. People don't like advertising, and they are increasingly empowered to avoid it. This reality will necessitate change and innovation. In fact, brands that engage consumers are already reaping the benefits. According to a recent study by VivaKi, click-through rates (CTRs) for videos that do not interrupt users are 106 percent higher than standard pre-roll, while lift in ad recall is 290 percent higher. The social video campaigns my company runs deliver 70-80 percent completion rates - for …
  • Future of Media - Consumer Choice
    The future will be the era of consumer choice and consumer voice. Online media is being transformed by consumer choice. As traditional broad-based online media platforms struggle, niche media - including blogs and vertical interest-based sites - are flourishing. Social media platforms - such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn - are contributing to this trend by further driving and enabling more personal content creation and curation. Consumers are demanding what they want, and - if it's not available - they're creating it themselves. Consumers choose and that choice will continue to be increasingly broad, niche, varied, instant, and personal. …
  • Publishers Take Note: The Future of Media is Content, Not Ads
    The future of media will be content, not ads. That's because even with the many innovations around traditional online advertising units such as banner and pre-roll, consumers have developed a knack for ignoring interruptive advertising experiences that deliver standard, unwanted ads. And as I recently noted in this MediaPost article about online ad spending, brands have recognized this dynamic and are now making major investments in long-form and viral video content that has the potential to engage and inspire audiences. Top agencies are now even hiring directors of earned media to amplify the reach and impact of this content. …
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