Wednesday, September 01, 2010

Life is crazy, life is good

After a ridiculously travel-intensive summer, we've returned to the normal hectic pace of the school year. At times, stress levels at Noctober Productions can be a bit high, but I keep thinking of the Trace Atkins song, "You're Gonna Miss This" and am pretty sure he is right.

Monday, June 28, 2010

Shout-down politics

This weekend's inane interview of AFL-CIO economist and pundit Ron Blackwell by Fox News' Neil Cavuto was remarkable only for the crude language that managed to sneak onto the air during the host's bullying diatribe. I don't watch the show and this reinforces that decision. My reason? If I want to see party hackery in action I can just look up talking points on the Internet.

Will we ever return to an era where real, earnest debate is again an acceptable format? Does logic and a well-reasoned argument that stands its own ground without the support of statistical doublespeak have any place in our society today? Somehow it seems that the Jerry Springer audience now is THE audience catered to by all.

What a shame.

Thursday, May 06, 2010

Sometimes I hate being right all the time.

Nearly 13 years ago, I described an inevitable shift in advertising model pricing on the web (see earlier post on advertising equilibrium). In this scenario, ad prices would be determined as a function of risk & timing to the two parties involved. Performance based ads would be the most expensive (from an advertisers perspective) because of low risk and slow payment terms, while impression based deals (and fixed sponsorships) would be the cheapest for the opposite reason. I also wrote and talked about how a shrewd advertiser could exploit disequilibrium because it was commonplace for the actual price curve to be inverted, with performance-based deals being super cheap and CPM grossly overpriced.

Google's shift from CPM ads to CPC in 2003 was the first big indicator that equilibrium was on its way. Facebook's policy shift this week is another major step. In his blog article, Chris Trayhorn writes about the recent recommendation from Facebook to its advertisers that "if you want Facebook traffic, you’d better be buying CPC".

There will always be pockets of disequilibrium, and of course situations where a buyer or seller of ads will add more weight to things like payment timing than the market might ascribe for reasons of their own. However, the general availability of buyer surplus that has enabled really good web marketers to look like heroes to their employers will soon be drawing to a close. Bummer.

The bright side is that with each new medium that comes on scene and survives the evolutionary cycle (more on this another day), the possibility that a new disequilibrium may emerge to be exploited. Interestingly enough, I think the next exploitable curve is likely to come in the "traditional" media channels of print, broadcast, and out of home. We've still got some work to do to assess the true value of these media to marketers (e.g., "what is awareness worth?"), but it is coming fast. So take heart, smart marketers - and you online gurus? Well, your next frontier may be to go back to the old frontier, break out your jackhammers, and peel up some pavement for the untapped gold mines long ago overlooked but still out there.

Monday, May 03, 2010

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Thinking about a post regarding Twitter's value add in the realm of customer care. It isn't what most people think, but as of 11AM ET today, I now believe there may be a there there. More soon.

Friday, March 05, 2010

Does the world really need another online video contest?

Sometimes I wonder if they are doing it on purpose. Agencies, I mean. Every single agency seems to have the exact same set of proposals (and media plans - that's for another day) and ideas that they pitch to every client they meet. Or is it just my company?

Yesterday, I saw, for what seems like the 100th time in the past 5 years, a recommendation that we pursue an online video contest for an upcoming campaign. Keep in mind, we are not a video company. We don't entertain people - we want to reach them and influence them and get them to choose us when it comes down to decision time. I'm just not sure how video contests are supposed to help with this.

Anyway, a quick glance at http://www.youtube.com/contests_main yields a lot of good info:

1) There are a ton of contests going on all the time.
2) There have been a ton of them that are now over.
3) Most of the submissions really suck.
4) In general, a good contest generates about 100,000-200,000 video views - hardly any exposure at all when you think about it as an advertiser.

I also think that many of the submissions come from the same people who really like submitting videos to contests. Most of these seem to have been shot with the built-in webcam and involve screen-lit faces rambling about nothing while looking at the screen just under the camera. Not a lot of them are good-looking people either. Are these really the people we want to market to? Or have marketing us? Seems maybe no.

Here's a thought - instead of trying to advertise on TV by developing a network, fan base, original programming, and slots in the program to insert advertising into maybe we could just buy ads on popular shows? Or product placements? Just sayin'.

If you have to do a contest, probably the best approach is to get people who are actually good at online video - Nalts, for example (www.willvideoforfood.com) and who have an audience to be the contestants. That way you get lots of exposure, better quality video, and way less cost.

Another idea is to do something really, really cool (like the new State Farm "This Too Shall Pass" ad - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w) and promote it so that it takes on a life of its own. Very costly but the results can be amazing.

What do you think?

Saturday, February 27, 2010

It's been a while. Maybe time to dust off the old brain...