A New Kind of Electoral Math: Facebook Friends!

From Wonkette:



This says a lot about how popularity works in 2.0 America.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

The New Faces of Patriotism

Ryan DigiShooz

Sociology for old duffers like me who hear "shoes" and think brogues, and hear kicks and feel phantom pain in their sitters.

WHAT WE LOST BY KICKING BRITISH BUTT

Face it - they've got much better words for things. A list from How Stuff Works.



Now stop reading this digital bog roll and go outside to the cookout.

Equal Time

I've hawked Obama many times here. So I thought I would try to balance the equation.

Does Life Get Any Cuter?

Nope.

OLDMTA Renovations Complete

Hi all,

I made a few visual changes here to improve load speed and get rid of the chicklet-arama which had gotten rather absurd in my sidebar. I've cut almost 100K from the page and a second from the load time. It's amazing how Chicklets and other bling add up. Some of the Chiclets remain but they are jammed at page bottom to load last and not affect your viewing.

I apologize if you tried to log in last night and got the all red page. ;-) I'm not so good with the HTML.

Thanks as always for visiting.

Product Placement Disclosure?

MediaPost this week reported that the FCC is considering requiring text disclosure of product placement in content. While their focus appears to be TV, product placment is likely to play such a huge role in the future of the web that I thought I would mention it.

Also, because you may want a bit of diversion as this is July 3rd and you are probably sitting there in a veal fattening pen twiddling your thumbs waiting until management declares that totally impromptu half day today that everyone expects, I thought I would also link you to a nice snarky piece on Shiznit that makes fun of the top ten worst movie product placements of all times. Very cleva. Be aware before you go that the piece is rather profane.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

WHITE PAPER THURSDAYS! MOBILE MEGATRENDS FROM VISIONMOBILE

A really nice presentation about the future of mobile. This is a really insightful deck from Andreas Constantinou at VisionMobile. While a couple months old, I think you will find it quite thought provoking.

About 8 other excellent and free research decks are available on the VM site.

| View | Upload your own

An Important Message

Heartfelt post from Kevin Long.

Gretchen and Cory's pics are...

...here. Thought I'd post a link to my much earlier post as lots of people are coming here today as a result of an email John Durham sent.

It's 10:00 PM. Do You Know Where Your Video's Running?

A few days ago I visited a niche web site and heard the unmistakable sound of one of those saleabration voiceovers advertising a car from a leading manufacturer. Trouble was, there was no car ad on the page. As it droned on it really began to drive me crazy, first because of volume and second because I couldn't find the bloody thing.

The audio finished after 30 seconds. And then it started again! It made me insane. Thought perhaps regular readers of this blog will say insan-er.

But I digress. It finished a second time. And then it started again.

Finally I closed the page I was on in disgust. And what did I find? A video popunder. I didn't even know such a thing existed. An autorun popunder with non user initiated audio?

But it gets better. I think the server forgot to include the size parameters of the file so I got a smear of a car serpentine stretched from one edge of the screen to the other.

As it was nearing the end of the month, I wonder if the org that sold this to the very large auto manufacturer was low on imps and fielded these popunders to fill out the buy.

Whatever the reason, it was a dreadful, rude, hideous experience that ran me off the content I wanted to see.

But it brought to home more strongly how the world of video has been a Wild West for too long. Brands need to more closely scrutinize what they are getting for their preroll dollars.

I couldn't figure out who the vendor/server was, and I am not going to disclose the client because I don't do swoop and poop on this blog.

But next time you have video to buy, ask some questions about where, when, and how the buy will be fulfilled. Because three of your impressions for June may have been delivered to me in a video popunder smear.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

The Changing Face of Car Advertising Media

So, for decades auto has been the number one sector of total US advertising. But no more, according to eMarketer. They say that that title now belongs to retail. But auto still is the colossus online, as each year shows dramatic growth in total online spend for this big budget industry:



Trends in auto are really the harbinger of what is going to come in loads of categories, at least in my opinion. When I worked at Carat they developed a model that helped an auto maker value different kinds of online interactions with auto ads differently, as a way of evaluating the relative effectiveness of different marketing tools. I am sure some of you have seen Sarah Fay deliver the case study for this innovative model that drove lots of other agencies in that same direction. Because auto is not generally an impulse buy (Maserati dealers might disagree) there are a variety of interactions that an auto advertiser can have with a consumer, and each has a slightly different value in terms of getting people in a car today. Whatever the value of these particular action, the underpinning to action and interaction allows digital to show an enormous effectiveness advantage over TV or Print.

We live in challenging economic times -- at least for most people, and I suspect that more and more purchases are going to be "considered" in the future. If that comes to pass, I would surmise that more advertisers will be shifting greater and greater emphasis to interactive marketing pieces delivered via IP (PC, console, mobile, etc.) That can only be good for billings in our space.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

In a nation of $5 gas...Zoospi offers a Spatial Search Engine

So, while listening to talk show host Randi Rhodes on the radio, I have begun to hear a lot of radio ads for a new service called Zoospi, that helps consumers find tradespeople who are working near by.

I have to admit, I thought this was one mighty bizarre idea when I first heard the ads. The way it works is that contractors, plumbers, gardeners, and other home service professionals put their upcoming schedules into Zoospi, and when consumers search for a particular type of service they see a list of people who will be or are working nearby. Said consumer contacts that service person and gets a "Distance Discount" or a "Vicinity Discount" (patents pending.) Presumably the former is for the dishwasher repair person who will be in your 'hood on Thursday, while a Vicinity Discount helps pros develop highly localized service areas and increase the density of customers in those areas.

Naturally, there is also a peer ratings system so you know if the fridge gal you are about to hire is good, punctual, and fairly priced.

Having once had to wait 9 days to get my somewhat rare fridge repaired, the idea of being able to get someone local to come by in like, a couple of hours, would have been very appealing at the time. Similarly, if you needed a recurring service like gardening and could get a deal...well why not?



The company explains the concept in terms of gas savings, but I see Zoospi as another way of grabbing new customers -- that it is a yellow pages alternative that has a twist that consumers may find compelling. And that may well be a viable business concept. Yellow pages advertising -- both paper and Internet -- is an enormous media segment, and getting a chunk of enormous could make a solid business, indeed.

The other major savings, of course, is in cutting travel and down time for workers. Much better to do 8 jobs 2 miles a part than 3 jobs 25 miles apart. How much money does THAT save? I bet it's quite a sum in terms of both incremental revenue and expense reduction.

Oh, and Zoospi offers billing services. Which must take away a big hassle for a lot of small businesses.

So maybe Zoospi isn't that bizarre after all. ;-)

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

MadCrazyLove: No $3.50 UGC for Lincoln

Have you heard about Lincoln's ambitious plan to support their flagship model with a real movie online? OK, a shortish movie, but three minutes is still pretty damned impressive in a world where commercials are now usually made with Popsicle sticks and somewhat insane youth.

The ad was produced by premier "urban" agency UniWorld. UniWorld is famous for producing ads that have their roots in African American America but which successfully cross over to hordes of impressed people who have never even heard of Tyler Perry.

The ad tells the story of...well dammit they musta spent like a bazillion dollars on this, so you should just watch the damned thing. There are a couple of minutes on the front of it with Uniworld people talking about the production, then the ad. Watch it now:



Or just see the ad in better resolution here. Note to Lincoln webmaster: you coulda had the hi-res embedded in this blog if you had just let us have the HTML embed code. I'll say this in your favor though - you know your Flash!

You know I am a big fan of UGC and citizen journalism and all that but sometimes when you have a big challenge, like the task of remaking the brand-challenged Lincoln Division of FoMoCo, you need a good old fashioned glitzy image ad.

I like it. A lot. It's also a nice reminder that money can be well spent making a big ad. Oh and that Uniworld knows how to evoke emotions big time.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

I Was Wrong About Live 365. And That's a Great Thing.

Back in the dot bomb, the agency I worked for at the time had the briefest of engagements with Live 365, the eminently populist online radio site that has literally thousands of broadcasters in the same way that Youtube has millions of would be Scorseses producing across the country.

Live 365 was great if you had esoteric radio interests. I, for example, was a devotee of a LiveIreland channel that played traditional Celtic music, and an All Reba All the Time minibroadcaster that played whole sides of my lady Reba crooning about mothers consigning their daughters to be golddiggers and men who cheat.

At the time, well I am not going to pull any punches, Live 365 was in disarray with the many challenges of having an unproven audio advertising model, copyright problems with a music industry that had (and continues to have) an asinine strategy of trying to limit content distribution in order to make money, low cash reserves, and a host of other little problems. And very little time to solve them. I didn't think they'd make it.



I'll say this for them then...they had a very committed team that clearly LOVED the radio format, and a sense of ethics that made them a company that DIDN'T look for dodgy ways to grow traffic with click farms and all that rot. But the problems seemed awfully big to me, and possibly untenable.

So recently I went to the URL to see who had bought it for a redirect, and was pleasantly stunned to see that not only were they still around, they seem to be doing rather well.

How did they do it? Well, I don't know anyone over there, but from what I can tell they developed a business model with over a dozen different kinds of subscription and ad revenue streams, a tightened copyright policy, and a platform that offers a variety of services for a fee.

First let's take a look at the ad model. As I recall, Live365 used to sell big square ads in their player, which rotated over the day to generate impressions. Where they went was to what I call the "CBS MarketWatch" strategy of defining an incredible array of advertising to find products that fit a variety of advertiser needs. I say CBS MarketWatch because they and their head of sales Scott McLernon pioneered the concept of a cacophony of ad products that were advertiser needs focused. And as a result CBSMarketWatrch thrived in a market where lots of others died on the vine.

But anyway, Live365 offers a cornucopia of ad products including:

1. Banners buttons and that sort of stuff
2. Audio gateway ads
3. Audio in stream ads
4. Video (natch)
5. Contests and sweeps
6. targeted niche music genre newsletters
7. Skinned players
8. Sponsored podcasts
9. Site takeovers

Well, that pretty much covers the toolset of the net, and they offer them all.

But suppose you are a consumer, and you want your Clannad or your Reba without ads? Live365 offers ad-free-subs as well to give you that ad free music experience you crave.

Live365 also learned that there were thousands of people who would pay for the privilege of broadcasting, so they get charged a fee to do it. Live365 offers coverage for all the royalty and licensing stuff if you broadcast copyrighted material.

So congrats to Live 365 for keeping it going -- and indeed innovating to succeed. I was wrong about ya'll and I am happy you proved me the village idiot on your prospects back in '01.

So the moral of the story? Don't bet the house on my predictions (I also thought Youtube would be crushed by Hollywood litigation), and figure out lots of ways to potentially make money. Sometimes you need to do the ole spaghetti strategy to see how a new media form can make money, so you try lots of things and keep the ones that work.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Where the Hell is Matt

and what does he have to do with ridiculously long lasting gum? Stride is sponsoring Matt in his adventure of filming himself doing a strange dance in countries around the world, and getting locals to join in.

The video is nothing short of genius. So sweet, so silly, so incredibly...viral.

This is a serious global undertaking, and Matt is quite the world traveler:

Antarctica
Argentina
Australia
Bahrain
Belgium
Belize
Bolivia
Brazil
Cambodia
Canada
Chile
Czech Republic
Denmark
Ecuador
Egypt
Fiji
France
Germany
Greece
Guatemala
Hungary
Iceland
India
Italy
Japan
Jordan
Kenya
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Lebanon
Malaysia
Mali
Mexico
Micronesia
Morocco
Myanmar
Namibia
New Zealand
Norway
Palau
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Seychelles
Singapore
Solomon Islands
South Africa
South Korea
Spain
Sweden
Taiwan
Tanzania
Thailand
The Netherlands
Tonga
Turkey
Uganda
United Kingdom
USA
Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia

But is the idea here that he's still chewing the same piece of gum as he dances? Or am I too much of a packaged goods dork to recognize that this sort of thing doesn't HAVE to be strategic. After all, I am posting about one of the gum industry's lesser players in space normally reserved for Internet privacy, BT, and praise of good ideas.

Aw H E double hockey stix. It's great video. Global delight. Global humor. From an effin' stick of gum. Watch for the DMZ piece. I imagine the dicussions on the DPRK side -- is this some sort of spy maneuver?



Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

imeem - making the web work for advertisers -- and music labels

I had the good fortune of sitting at the same table as Helen Har at Gretchen and Cory's wedding. It got me to thinking about signs that the music industry is getting something positive and lucrative from the web. Helen is VP of Sales - West for imeem, which is the leading music centered social network with some 25 million registrants.

To be honest I had forgotten about imeem, which is not a statement about their marketing (25 million is a rockin' member number) but rather about the low level of personal interest I have in music. I like music -- everyone likes music, but some people -- lots of people but not me -- live eat sleep and breathe music, and they are the lifeblood of imeem and other music driven networks.



What's interesting to me about imeem is their partner list, which reads like a what's what of the music biz. Look at these names:

- EMI
- Sony BMG
- Universal
- Warner
- and about 60 other labels, it appears

Just the fact that EMI is on the list says a lot about imeem, because EMI appears to be the most litigious regarding digital media issues. It's clear that the music industry understands the incredible value (potential and REAL) that social media play in the dispersion and trial of music. As the role of radio...changes?...declines?...recalibrates?...the web is going to play the central role in the music business.

What I liked about talking with Helen was both her enthusiasm for what she does and for the organization she is part of. I have occasionally taken potshots at the music industry on this blog for what I believe is their myopic perspective on digital content -- specifically that reducing the amount of content out there will somehow increase profits. She pleasantly set me straight about my view -- that my absolutist perspective is only a small part of the larger picture.

- First, because the music industry has truly been weakened by piracy.
- Second because advertising has not (yet) been able to take up the revenue slack caused by piracy.
- And third that my definition of online music is kinda sorta wrong or at least simplistic.

Helen seems to be of the view that music content has a much broader definition than just the MP3s, and that her job and imeem's job is to prove that that broader definition is critical to making digital work for BOTH advertisers AND the music business. That imeem (and other music innovations) can massively alter the revenue situation for the industry for the better as it also delivers what advertisers need.

Making digital work for the music business is essential for both the future of music and the future of the web. Helen reminded me that the web story is not all about iTunes and BitTorrent and nothing else, and got me thinking that maybe the sale of music online will be a secondary source of revenue to the opportunity to monetize musical interest through advertising, promotions, and sponsorship.

So thank you Helen. I appreciate being schooled on such an important issue as music. And schooled by such a smart and funny individual.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Footbo.com - Oh God, MORE SOCCER!!!

Chris Schwarze has an interesting post in his blog about social net Footbo, especially for football (read soccer) fans. Nice site. But it makes me tremble to think that now the guys in our office will have MORE soccer things to talk about. About a week ago I was talking about the soccer phenom in our office to the one other person at CSF who isn't a major soccer fan (Cory.) I said that it would all quiet down when this world championship thing is over, Cory joked, "Jim, there's always soccer on somewhere. It never ends. There's a Cup every month."

He meant it as a joke, but I will not be at all surprised if I hear an online video of Krasnoyarsk United playing Sakhalin FC over the cube wall soon, with the six guys in the dojo debating the merits of Ivan Ivanovich versus Tolya Tolyovich and their ball handling skills.I swear to God I heard them talk about Lichtenstein's players once. Or was it a Monaco - Andorra grudgematch? Perhaps Tristan da Cunha - Nightingale Island best of five.

I'm convinced that my fellow Catalystas would learn to transliterate a Cyrillic fantasy soccer interface in Ekonomika i Zhizn or the Krasnoyarskaya Pravda if it meant they could follow this sport more. And in my head I can hear what the endless hours of debate over 7 players -- all named Ivan or Sascha -- will sound like.

What is the hold that this game has over people? I'll admit that I like to watch Mexican soccer on Univision and Telemundo...but Catalystas are obsessional on the topic.

At least I am learning about how fantasy sports interfaces work. Or should I say Fantaskaya Sports Interfacovnas.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

2008: The Internet Election

Some amazing data has recently come out of the venerable Pew Internet and American Life Project about how consumers are using the Internet to get information and become involved in the political process. 40% of the US pop went online for political info in 2008 thus far, up from 31% for the same time period in 2004.



Further, while people are somewhat skeptical of the veracity of online info, they like its populist nature and generally find it no less credible than offline media.



Racially, the data show that African Americans have SIGNIFICANTLY increased their use of the web as a poltiical info tool. Fist bumps all around for that.



And finally, the data show broad usage across income groups.



These lifted charts are just a small sample of the insights you can get from the report here.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Online Video Ad Spend Growth, 19.2% CAGR ; TV, 2.1%

The wonderful folks at eMarketer have released some interesting predictive data about video viewing habits. According to their new study, consumer control of where, when, and how they view video is causing glacial changes in TV viewing habits. Wait, not sure if I am using glacial correctly. Glacial as in enormous and unstoppable, not as in speed.


media
As their reports highlights page says:

Traditional TV broadcasters and advertisers have little time to wait to reinvent themselves and their organizations to take advantage of the interactive, on-demand and mobile video future.

Like Dennis the Menace used to say, "And how!"

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Internet: Now 75% US HH Penetration

Pew has updated the data for what percentage of people are online by demo. Find the whole shebang of data that you get asked for once a month or so by clicking here.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

MySpace and NBC Partner for a UGV/UGC Political Journalism Contest

I've long been thinking that UGC is poised to earn some respect as a potential media platform, and this contest from MySpace and NBC is some evidence of that. The contest offers a prize of a free trip to one of the two conventions to act as a journalist on the NBC team. How cool is that! The folks at MSNBC's Morning Joe are to act as judges -- if you aren't too familiar with the Morning Joe, check out the integrity of one of their anchors when asked to lead with a Paris Hilton story.



Morning Joe is an odd show, so it is only natural that they would judge this delightfully odd contest.

This thing is getting hyped six ways to Sunday on MSNBC so I spect it'll be big Big BIG!

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

How Are Gas Prices Affecting Your Business?

They are, you know. More money for gas means less money for everything else. Consider the following data on how gas prices are affecting purchases of items as simple and essential as FOOD.

Specifically, more than half of low income houses, according to this data from the Center For Media Research and IRI, are having difficulty buying food. It looks like about 20% of households with incomes greater than $50K are as well.



And what they are buying is changing. the same study reports the following trade offs with regard to their food purchases.


Food is essential for life. It's often one of the last things that people economize on. Because it is kinda important. So how do you suppose gas prices are affecting YOUR busines?

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

eyealike Just Made It Easy to Find Pirates

Spotted some news about this company on TechCrunch, and thought I'd show you their vid.

Billions of pages. Millions of videos. How do you find pirated video content in an environment like that? Well, eyealike has a way to use facial recognition, histograms, and a variety of other things to find pirate videos -- or portions of videos.

It'll even find the stuff if it is cropped or colorized. Once the vid is spotted, the system notifies the copyright holder of the exact online location. And the cease and desists can start flying.

They claim 95% find rates, and zero false positives. Them's some good stats. Check out this vid to see it in demoized action.



Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

LLUF XOBNI?

I had a friend write me an effusive IM about Xobni, so I thought I'd take a minute to discuss the latest version. XOBNI is a Microsoft Outlook Inbox application that helps the user better access what they need from the avalanche of email messages we all face.

BTW, look at the name hard for an instant and you will see why they called their offering XOBNI. Could it be...inbox spelled backwards?

XOBNI appears in a window next to your Outlook. It collects a bunch of info from every email you receive so you can get at what you need faster. Some highlights include:

- Faster search for people and discussions you want to access now
- Threaded conversations so you can refer back to past messages
- Analysis of your correspondence with individuals so you know what, when, and how to best contact them.
- Organization of attachments from past conversations, by individual and topic.
- LinkedIn plug in to discover the social network of your correspondents.
- Telephone contact info automatically extracted from emails -- no more entering info manually into Outlook.
- Autoscheduler

Here's a video of the highlights.



I keep my inbox frighteningly organized without XOBNI, though it takes more than a little time to do so. But the ways in which I catalog info, and my personal business rules -- for example IMMEDIATELY keying in phone numbers when I get them -- really mirror XOBNI's simpler approach. It'd meet a time saving need for me, but if you are one of those people with 20,000 emails in the inbox, it could be of even broader benefit.

Microsoft was trying to acquire them about two months ago, but apparently the XOBNI people have bigger plans than being an Outlook plug-in, including being compatible with Yahoo Mail.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

Robuster Notice for Privacy Policies

I've been thinking about the concept of "robust notice" a lot because it is one of the four tenets of the FTC's requirements as they relate to online profiling and data collection. Specifically, the FTC requires that sites give "robust notice" to consumers of what they collect, when, how, and what they use the information for. Here's some lifted text from the FTC site, related specifically to the proposed NAI standards.

Notice: Consumers will receive notice of network advertisers' profiling activities on host Web sites and have the ability to choose not to participate in profiling. If personally identifiable information is collected, "robust" notice (appearing at the time and place of information collection) will be required before the personal data is entered. Where non-personally identifiable information (or "clickstream" data) is collected for profiling, clear and conspicuous notice will be in the host Web site's privacy policy. Under the NAI Principles, NAI companies will contractually require that host Web sites provide these disclosures and will make reasonable efforts to enforce those requirements.

It's important to note that too many sites are in violation of this fairly nebulous definition.

And in my opinion, we need to do a better job than the FTC requires if we are to avoid significant consumer backlash against the collection of data, whether PII or anonymized. If we have nothing to hide, =why do so many sites tuck this stuff away in dark and smelly places?

To be sure, many sites have dramatically improved the prominence of links, organization of privacy policy contents, and indexing of privacy policies to make them clearer and easier to understand. But I think it's important that we as an industry do more on this front.

For whatever reason, consumers care more about privacy online than they do the literally thousands of companies that are collecting, trading and selling personal information offline, frequently tied to PII. Digital should lead in disclosure, not follow the lead of obfuscates. Mostly, we do lead, but we can do even better.

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.

322 Pictures of Gretchen and Cory's Wedding!!!

Well, here they are. 322 pictures of Gretchen and Cory's Wedding Day, which was Saturday, June 28. Combine one part Most Beautiful Bride in the World with one part Remarkably Incredible Guy and you get a magnificent wedding! The wedding was at Meadowood Resort in Napa Valley, an absolutely picture perfect location to begin a life together.

Note on the player. If you roll over the top of the picture, a control will open that will allow you to speed up or slow down the show.




Many thanks to the Seiple and Treffiletti families for allowing me to share this wonderful day!