| MICROSOFT AND YAHOO SENT CLEAR signals Tuesday in separate announcements that both have set their sights on grabbing a larger piece of the mobile space, as advertising and marketing opportunities continue to rise. Microsoft signed a deal with Nokia to bring its Silverlight developer platform to the Series 60, which runs on the Symbian operating system. Nokia, the biggest seller of smartphones, also plans to offer the software in Internet-tablet devices. Silverlight, which gives software developers tools to create animation and video for the Web, already powers thousands of applications worldwide for "Entertainment Tonight" and NBC Universal, among others. Microsoft has been marketing Silverlight to media partners, as well as dumping Flash-based content from its own sites, replacing it with applications built on Silverlight as a way to spur adoption for the technology. Internet marketing didn't take off until ads became more graphic, visual and tied together smoothly with content. Analysts expect the same to happen for advertising and marketing on mobile phones because the deal pits Microsoft against Adobe's Flash in the mobile phone market, where its animation and video software hasn't caught on. Strengthening its position among advertising and marketing agencies, Microsoft appears to be sending a message to designers and developers who create rich media for the Web that they are serious about online and mobile ads. "Microsoft is trying to go after the big community of Flash developers that Adobe wants to migrate onto mobile," said John du Pre Gauntt, senior analyst at research firm eMarketer. "That's because if you want to work on Madison Avenue as an interactive designer and don't know Flash, or a program like Silverlight, people look at you as if you're illiterate." Advertising revenue on mobile devices should reach $16.2 billion worldwide by 2011--up from nearly $5 billion this year, estimates eMarketer. Aiming squarely at Google's advertising and search business on mobile devices, Yahoo launched onePlace, a mobile bookmarking tool scheduled to debut in Q2 that would allow users to aggregate and filter favorite content and information from across the Web. The application for mobile devices marks links, news feeds and search results. It sorts and filters content into more than 50 categories, serving up the media to cellular phones in bite-size pieces on any browser. For example, news stories and accompanying photos--or flight information and weather for a specific region in the world--would serve-up in bite-size pieces on mobile device screens. Consumers can view the content instantly, or store and save it for later. The application complements Yahoo's mobile search tool oneSearch, and oneConnect, which integrates email, phone numbers, text and IM addresses in one location. Bookmarking and filtering tools aren't new. Yahoo also owns del.icio.us, a bookmarking tool for PCs, but small screens on mobile devices require different views of content. Will the two mobile apps work together if Microsoft acquires Yahoo? Probably not, du Pre Gauntt said. "You're talking about two applications built on completely different platforms; one proprietary and the other open," he says. Despite differences in culture and applications, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told reporters Monday at CeBit in Hanover, Germany that the Redmond, Wash. company still wants Yahoo--although analysts aren't clear whether Microsoft's $42 billion bid for Yahoo, made public Feb. 1, can even work.
Online Media Daily |
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
ATT: Microsoft, Yahoo Eye Larger Slices Of Mobile Pie | Online Media Daily
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Google: Metrics Key To Keeping Web Ads Afloat In Recession, Not Clicks | Online Media Daily
natural search value proposition, one of the giant's top engineering
brass aimed to still the hearts of financial types feeling antsy over
declining ad clicks and a slumping economy.
"If an advertiser knows that they'll make five dollars by spending one
dollar, the chance is high that they'll spend it," said Alan Eustace,
senior vice president of engineering & research at Google. "We've
stressed measurability and providing a clear return on investment
since we started our advertising business--and the growth of paid
search shows that advertisers have bought into that. That's what will
help us in times like these."
Eustace addressed attendees at the Morgan Stanley Technology
Conference in Dana Point, Calif. on Monday, acknowledging that as a
relatively young company, Google hadn't experienced a true recession--
and that the market would have to, in a sense, "wait and see" what
future performance would look like.
But Eustace said that there were factors that made Google more
resilient than other ad providers in the industry. In addition to
attracting advertisers from across verticals, "our business is
geographically diversified across the world in fast-growing, medium
and stable markets," Eustace said.
As for the declining clicks--most recently reported by comScore, but
also by Google itself, during its fourth-quarter 2007 earnings
release--Eustace reiterated that the decrease stemmed from algorithmic
improvements on the ad-serving end, as well as the reduction of
clickable space for AdSense ads.
"It would have been easy for us to avoid making those kinds of
changes, or just increase the number of ads," Eustace said. "But we
made choices to reduce the number of advertisers and decrease
accidental clicks, because the changes deliver better information to
users and make them click more in the long run."
Eustace added that while clicks had decreased, advertiser conversion
rates were much higher--partly due to the giant's requirements that
many advertisers improve their ads' landing pages. "It's a shared
revenue stream between us and the advertisers, so they've been equally
motivated to improve the user experience," he added.
When it comes to organic search, Eustace said that the market is still
very competitive. "If a bigger, better alternative came out, people
would use it," he said. "So our engineers are not feeling fat, dumb
and happy because we feel like we don't have to work at search.
Competition could come from anywhere, and we work hard because we need
to meet user expectations."
//by Tameka Kee, Tuesday, Mar 4, 2008 7:45 AM ET
Tameka Kee can be reached at tameka@mediapost.com
Saturday, February 23, 2008
Survey: Business Execs Slow To Adopt All-In-One Devices | MediaPost
| Thursday, Feb 21, 2008 8:00 AM ET |
| INSTEAD OF EMBRACING NEW ALL-IN-ONE devices, U.S. businesspeople are sticking with older technologies--and their employers aren't forcing them to upgrade, according to a new survey by high-tech market researcher In-Stat. The idea that the business customers will switch over wholesale to so-called converged devices is unrealistic. But once they grasp the benefits of devices such as smartphones, adoption can proceed quickly. The report found that 8% of business "road warriors" have given up a desk phone to rely solely on their mobile number. But before employers can insist that employees use fewer devices, manufacturers have to address battery life and ergonomics issues for mobile devices, In-Stat said.
--Mark Walsh |
Google Expands AdSense For Video, Sets Deals With Tremor, YouMe, Others | MediaPost
| by Gavin O'Malley and Joe Mandese, Thursday, Feb 21, 2008 8:00 AM ET | ||
| IN A BID TO ACCELERATE its role in the burgeoning online video advertising marketplace, search giant Google this morning is announcing a slew of deals expanding its AdSense for video beta. To date, the AdSense program has focused mainly on enabling Web publishers to serve text-only ads. The video beta version, enables publishers to serve targeted, contextually-relevant video graphical ads and text overlays, and is seen as an alternative to the pre-roll an post-roll advertising clips that have become the industry's default standard advertising format. Google has been working on ways to expand its reach into video ever since its $1.65 billion acquisitions of YouTube in 2006, and recently began accelerating its role in TV advertising sales, as well, via its AdWords For TV program, which enables advertisers to buy addressable TV advertising on cable and satellite TV systems. Early this morning, Google announced deals with the Tremor Media and YouMe video advertising networks, two of what are expected to be several partnership deals for its AdSense for video expansion. Tremor said it has incorporated "one-click integration" of Google's contextually targeted ads into its dynamic ad insertion platform, Ad-inStream, for publishers in Tremor Media's network to accept targeted Google AdSense for video advertising formats with only a check-box. According to comScore, Tremor Media provides access to consumers through their network of more than 800 aggregated sites that reach 94 million unique users every month. Publishers across Tremor Media's network can now support traditional text overlays through Google's AdSense for video beta, providing contextually targeted advertising by leveraging a video's metadata. In addition, Tremor will also support InVideo graphical and rich media overlays that aid advertisers with a consistent brand message across their traditional display advertising as well as emerging video ad formats.
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[ATT iPhone Stats] Flat-Rate Plans Could Spur Mobile Growth | MediaPost
| by Mark Walsh, Friday, Feb 22, 2008 7:45 AM ET | |
| THE MOVE TOWARD FLAT-RATE, UNLIMITED calling plans by three of the major U.S. wireless carriers this week could help spur the growth of mobile media and advertising, say industry analysts and mobile marketing executives. They view the unlimited $100 voice plans announced in succession by Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile as fostering greater usage, and as a step toward all-you-can-eat offers that will eventually include data services. That would help turn the cell phone into a more ad-friendly platform as more people download content, send text messages and surf the mobile Web. Currently, only about 14% of U.S. mobile subscribers have data plans, according to December data from mobile market researcher M:Metrics. Content providers and marketers have generally been frustrated with slower-than-expected growth of mobile media. "I think it's the beginning of game-changing," said Eswar Priyadarshan, CTO of Quattro Wireless, which operates a mobile ad network built around 60 large, branded sites as well as the newer GetMobile self-service ad platform. "(Carriers) are already bundling text into unlimited plans and it seems that they will drop in data as well." Some observers are already predicting that the new flat-rate plans signal the start of a price war among the major carriers that could push rates even lower as voice traffic becomes increasingly commoditized. Sprint--whose CEO Dan Hesse touched off the rapid-fire round of carrier pricing moves by telling USA Today the company may introduce an unlimited, flat-rate plan--could try to undercut the new $100 plans. "I think this will motivate some number of people who don't already have them to get data plans, and bring the overall cost of mobile plans down," said Greg Sterling, senior analyst for Local Mobile Search, a unit of Opus Research. He added that the unlimited voice plans would also encourage more people to forgo their land lines in favor of cell phones instead of paying for both. The savings could be used to add a data plan. The new offers aren't necessarily restricted to voice minutes. T-Mobile has already upped the ante a bit by including unlimited text and instant messaging in its new $100 voice plan. Verizon, meanwhile, offers an all-in-one unlimited package covering voice, messaging, its V CAST data service, VZ Navigator GPS service, and mobile email for $140 a month. That's a good step, said Priyadarshan, but still too pricey to sweep in a much broader base of data customers. He pointed to smaller carriers such as Cricket, MetroPCS and Leap Wireless that already offer voice and data packages for $30 to $50. Their larger rivals might charge just as much for data services, he said. These regional operators, however, don't have the same national coverage as major carriers, and the plans don't include unlimited roaming. Even so, their share of mobile Web browsing traffic on Quattro's network of sites is higher than the overall subscriber market, Priyadarshan said. "We see great results in user behavior in terms of mobile surfing and click-throughs. It's a vibrant mobile media and advertising environment among these folks," he said. At the high-end, the iPhone's $60 unlimited monthly plan via AT&T has played a part in its success in opening up the mobile Web. AT&T says 95% of iPhone users surf the mobile Web, and Google recently disclosed that iPhone owners were making 50 times more searches than users of other mobile devices. James Colby, vice president and CMO of Comverse Americas, a unit of telecom software and services provider Comverse, agreed it would take combined voice and data plans under $100 to really kick the mobile media into high gear. "If you take away the price constraints then you could see massive growth in traffic," he said. "If it's truly all-you-can-eat, then the era of the mobile Internet is upon us overnight." As it is, he doesn't see the unlimited voice plans shaking things up much when wireless calling plans in North America already offer 1,000 minutes for $40 or 1,000 minutes for $100. "Maybe it's just a bit of marketing and hype rather than something that will impact the market," he said. Still, the potential for upselling is there, noted William Ho, a wireless analyst at high-tech market research firm Current Analysis. He cited a securities filing by Verizon Thursday that indicated only 0.5% of its customer base currently have wireless plans for over $100 a month. "Given that, the upsell opportunity is probably greater than the cannibalization of higher-priced plan users," he said.
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Mad Ave Faces Learning Curve On Incorporating Mobile Into Ad Plans | MediaPost
| by Mark Walsh, Friday, Feb 8, 2008 8:30 AM ET | |
| AGENCIES ARE GEARING UP FOR mobile advertising, but the process of mobile media planning and buying is still very much a work in progress according to a panel of ad executives convened at the OMMA Mobile conference Wednesday. Buoyed by growing client interest in mobile ads, agencies are starting to field mobile specialists and acquire the expertise to help elevate cell phones to must-buy media. But incorporating mobile into the marketing mainstream remains a learning process for both Madison Avenue and advertisers. On the bright side, media buyers say clients are now more committed to spending on mobile advertising than a year or two years ago. Mobile in the past was the last line item in the media mix," said Bryon Morrison, president of ipsh!, the mobile marketing firm acquired in 2005 by Omnicom Group. "Now they realize the medium's not going to go away and they're taking a different approach." He noted that clients were approaching the Omnicom unit in the last six months with dedicated mobile budgets. To capture an expected rise in mobile ad dollars, Jeff Stier, senior vice president, business growth, North America, JWT, said the firm this year has begun assigning a [X2: JUST ONE] mobile marketing expert to its "core teams" across the agency. "So mobile marketing is integrated right into the mix from the very beginning," he said. Within its "Section 64" innovation unit, JWT is also taking a proactive approach by testing mobile marketing initiatives that the agency can then use to help convince clients of the effectiveness of mobile advertising. "I think overall mobile budgets are still small compared to traditional media so we're creating platforms proving consumers want to spend time in the mobile space," Stier said. In an earlier panel Wednesday, Louis Gump, vice president, mobile, Weather Channel Interactive, cited a recent JupiterResearch report estimating that 7% major brands would spend more than $1 million on mobile ad campaigns this year, and another 13% would spend more than $100,000. But most mobile advertisers are still spending well under $50,000 on mobile. Compiling research on mobile consumers has been a key focus at Starcom Worldwide as well. Angela Steele, who is spearheading Starcom's mobile efforts, explained that the firm has pursued research to find out the extent of advertising consumers are willing to accept on their cell phones. "Because the device is personal, advertising really needs to be relevant," she said. The more relevant an ad or promotional offer is, the more receptive mobile users will be to the message. James McNamara, former director of sales channels at Sprint, who recently left to help start mobile consultancy Wasabi Mobile, pointed to targeted opportunities for retailers especially in customer relations marketing. In that model, a retailer might try to cross-match data for a certain group of customers with that of a wireless carrier to send a highly targeted coupon offer, for example. In testing, that type of program has shown conversion rates better than 20%. Of course, such an initiative would also raise privacy issues and the challenge of extending it across carriers. But McNamara said it was important for agencies to approach mobile more as a direct response channel rather than as a traditional broadcast medium. "Data is really the gold nugget of mobile advertising," he said. Just sorting out the fragmented mobile landscape is a big part of the agencies' education process for now. Steele explained that Starcom meets with everyone connected to the mobile industry because it can't rule out any players in the emerging market. But that doesn't necessarily mean the meetings last long. "Every company says they're a full service mobile solution, but after about five minutes of drilling down you figure out that they only have one small piece of it," she said.
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Nokia Ad Chief Touts Mobile Phone's Advantages | MediaPost
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| by Mark Walsh, Friday, Feb 8, 2008 8:30 AM ET | |
| OPENING WITH A QUIP ABOUT this being the seventh year in a row that mobile is supposed to kick into high gear, Jeremy Wright, Nokia's global ad chief, made the case for why the mobile phone should be a bigger ad venue than it is during his keynote address at the OMMA Mobile conference Wednesday. Ticking off some of the industry's impressive stats, from 3.3 billion mobile phones worldwide to 17% annual expected growth for mobile advertising in the next few years, Wright set the stage for the third-screen's inevitable triumph as a global, yet highly targetable marketing platform. Except for certain geographic holdouts, including the U.S. "There's a lot of cynicism (about mobile ads) in the Western world, but that's not true across the rest of the world. People are more rational and want to see what it is," he said. Among mobile's as yet untapped strengths is its ability to generate strong ad response rates-in the range of 10% to 20% and well beyond that of the wired Internet or traditional media. "One of the most bizarre things in the market is that hardly any brands are using mobile to improve response rates from offline channels," he said. He also stressed the importance of location-based services as a killer app for mobile phones. Marketing messages can be directed to consumers while shopping, increasing the chances of an impromptu purchase. "Acting on impulse, that's what advertising should be all about," he told the packed room. Because mobile yields more user data than any other media, it also offers the greatest opportunity to hit the right audience at the right time with the right message. The flip side is that marketers, carriers and other mobile players have to give consumers control over what they see and hear on their cell phones. "This control thing comes up again and again," said Wright, because of the more personal nature of mobile devices compared to traditional media outlets. Given the fragmented landscape of mobile advertising, Wright took the opportunity to tout some of Nokia's efforts to standardize and streamline ad-buying on cell phones. The handset giant late last year acquired Boston-based Enpocket to accelerate build out its mobile ad platform for publishers, advertisers and carriers. And with 900 million Nokia phones in circulation worldwide, or 40% of mobile users, it can certainly offer extensive reach. "To make this medium work we have to deliver valuable mobile services and make them work," said Wright. "And give enough control to users so this really does improve their lives."
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Publicis Adopts 'Yield Management,' Will Utilize System For Cross-Internet Media Buys | MediaPost
| by Joe Mandese, Friday, Feb 8, 2008 8:30 AM ET | |
| IN A MOVE TO CREATE greater "transparency" in its purchases of digital media, Publicis Groupe Media this morning announced a deal to incorporate "yield management" systems developed by Rapt Inc. The deal gives Publicis media and interactive agencies a dashboard like system to look across the inventory and pricing strategies of various media sellers they are negotiating with. "For example, a publisher will be able use Rapt Information Services to analyze historic and expected demand for video advertising and proactively align their pricing and inventory strategies to better serve the market," the companies said. Yield management systems have been used historically by the travel industry, especially airlines, to optimize revenue for their inventory - pricing and re-pricing airline seats, hotel room vacancies, etc., based on increases and decreases in demand. Over the years, some major media companies, including television networks, have tried to incorporate such systems into their sales operations, but are believed to have defaulted to traditional person-to-person negotiations in their deals. Publicis claims the Rapt system will give its media buyers the advantage of "real-world metrics across the digital advertising spectrum," enabling them to make more informed purchases and plans. "For example, in negotiating prices on behalf of a pharmaceutical company for placements on a premium online health site, a media planner can use Rapt Information Services to better understand the external market value for relevant inventories and content types," the company said. Publicis said it would utilize the system for its Starcom MediaVest Group, ZenithOptimedia Group and Digitas units to create "greater transparency and liquidity" on an estimated $1.5 billion in cross-Internet media buys. "Digital ad purchasing is still too opaque and inefficient," Jack Klues, chairman of Publicis Groupe Media stated, adding, "We are partnering with Rapt because we share their belief that clearer baselines, metrics, and indices will only expand the total market. We are delighted to help shape this initiative and lay the cornerstone of the program's data foundation."
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Publishers Try Bold New Marketing Concept: Free Samples | MediaPost
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| by Sarah Mahoney, Tuesday, Feb 19, 2008 5:00 AM ET | |
| TO ANY PACKAGE-GOODS MARKETER, OFFERING free samples is usually a slam-dunk: Customers fall in love with the freebie and then turn into paying customers. But in the downtrodden world of book publishing, the news that Harper Collins will give away free electronic versions of best-sellers, and that Random House will be selling books by the chapter, have raised a few eyebrows. Yet some experts say that if anything, such innovations are overdue: Just as consumers have come to expect that they can sample music online, they have also become accustomed to browsing through books, whether it's via Amazon's "Search Inside" technology or similar browsing features used by publishers. The idea of sampling is becoming more and more widespread. In a profile of writer Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff, The Wall Street Journal this week also included a link to one of the short stories included in the collection. (Both HarperCollins and the Journal are owned by News Corp.) "The strategy of giving content away is getting people to read more and buy more," says Thomas Woll, president of Cross River Publishing Consultants, in Katonah, N.Y. He says the National Academies Press, for example, which publishes scientific books, journals and papers, "gives away most of the books on their list for free, if you want to read them onscreen. And they've found that the more people read onscreen, the more they buy." HarperCollins' offerings are hard to resist, prominently displayed on the main page of its Web site. Readers can tackle I Dream in Blue, Roger Director's story of life as a diehard Giants fan; Paulo Coelho's The Witch of Portobello, or The Undecided Voter's Guide to the Next President. It also offers a fun "Browse Inside on Your iPhone" feature, enabling readers to page through titles by best-selling authors like Michael Korda, Faye Kellerman, Ray Bradbury, and Jack and Suzy Welch, as if they were at a bookstore. "You can buy pie by the slice," Random House tells customers on its home page. "Why not a book?" The publisher is selling a chapter of Chip & Dan Heath's best-selling Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die for $2.99. The company says it believes this is "the first time a major trade publisher has offered readers the opportunity to buy digitized sections of a book." Consumers who buy a chapter will receive an e-mail with a link for downloading the purchased file, which it says cannot be shared electronically. "The book business is relatively flat and has been for a number of years," says Woll. And both companies' experiments are interesting, he says, because typically--for all publishers have talked a good game about competing with Amazon--"they've sold their books at full retail price, and haven't been competitive." But clearly, Amazon, with its easy-to-use features, browse-this-book technology and most recently, with Kindle, which allows readers to wirelessly download all kinds of content, is the one to beat. "Making an entire book available for free, or selling a book chapter by chapter--these are things Amazon isn't doing," he says. For now, he says, it's a whole new world. "Even Harvard University is contemplating putting its scholarly research, normally published in small journals, on the Web for free."
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Scion Goes After Urban Youths With Street, Web Campaign | MediaPost
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| by Karl Greenberg, Tuesday, Feb 19, 2008 5:00 AM ET | |
| TOYOTA'S SCION DIVISION IS LAUNCHING new marketing initiatives this week. Agency Attik is overseeing a grassroots effort to promote the limited-edition version of Scion's xB car, the xB 5.0, of which Scion is creating only 2,500. All of the cars come with a mica-gold exterior paint scheme. According to Simon Needham, Attik's co-founder and creative chief, who works out of the agency's L.A. office, the effort--visiting 10 cities in California, Texas, Florida, Georgia, Oregon and Washington--has street teams in security uniforms driving campaign-branded armored transports. Street teams will give away "gold bars" that include skullcaps and passwords to a microsite where consumers can get product info and download a screensaver, instant messaging icons and a desktop background. Separately, Scion is launching a Web campaign using widgets--transportable content windows--as part of a viral campaign for its three cars. Peter Kim, president of Pasadena, Calif.-based Web advertising tech firm Interpolls, which is hosting the effort (and created the widgets), tells Marketing Daily the ad windows can be moved from Web site to Web site. He said the goal is to give Scion a far broader reach than the company would get from a traditional online ad buy, since consumers can copy the widgets and put them on social network pages like MySpace and Facebook. "Scion will be able to promote their three vehicles [xB, xD and tC] in the product line in a single execution. You will see in the link that there will be three vehicles you can roll over, and then click on the vehicle that interests you the most, and when you do you will see a video execution on the vehicle," says Kim. Consumers will also be able to vote on which of the "Little Deviant" characters they like best. The animated "deviants" are gremlin-like characters that were central to Attik's most recent Scion brand campaign, launched last year. In Scion's current ad push, the little gremlin-like characters ride about in Scion vehicles. The effort will initially run on offbeat, urban youth-targeted sites, per Kim. Attik's Needham says that there will be another round of "Little Deviants" creative coming in the spring. "The campaign will end in the June or July time frame." He adds that much of the forthcoming work will run on traditional print and outdoor media. He says a major Web-based effort will not come unless it's part of a major commitment to a new campaign. "Obviously, there will always be online components--but my attitude right now is that we are at the point where, unless we are producing something for the Web that is genuinely unique and substantial, it's not worth the time and effort."
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