We all know that online reviews have strong persuasive power for consumers looking for reassurance about what and where they buy. No matter how beautiful your TV ads…no matter how attractive your web pages…there’s really nothing like a user endorsement to get people comfy with clicking the buy button.
According to Forrester, more than seven out of ten consumers say that they are more likely to buy from a site that bears positive consumer reviews on its pages. And I’ll wager that for smaller businesses that 70% figure actually UNDERSTATES the importance of such endorsements. First, because when we don’t know a retailer we are less likely to trust it with our personal information. Second, because we need assurance that the sites we choose offer a good value. Reviews help on both scores.
The challenge for small and medium-sized businesses is that the reviews for an individual retailer are scattered across the web, and can be difficult for consumers to find. And we know that when things are difficult to find online, consumers often abandon their searches and move on.
An offering called ReviewSpotter is a review discovery and presentation widget that helps retailers benefit from such reviews, at a very low monthly cost.
Review Spotter starts by scrounging the web looking for reviews for a particular online retailer. They then make the reviews available in a semi-customizable widget that can be easily incorporated into a site. As part of the service, the platform continues to sift through the web looking for new reviews to add to the rotation on the widget. The widget itself ONLY features positive reviews and ratings, and clients can actually select the reviews they wish to feature in the unit.
Consumers that are interested in seeing the retailer review where it originally appeared can simply click anywhere on the widget and a new browser window is spawned. That’s a nice feature because it reassures suspicious consumers that the reviews are real.
Improving results on a website is less about monumental changes than taking small steps. Including reviews on your site can help in that stream of incremental improvement. At just $40 a month, with no contract, offerings like this are certainly worth serious consideration.
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
Showing posts with label COD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label COD. Show all posts
Friday, May 27, 2011
Start-Up Watch COD: Magnetic delivers search retargeting to millions and millions
am a huge believer in the potential of search retargeting to drive strong ROI for brands. The model, for those who may be unfamiliar, is that a search retargeting firm serves banner ads to people based upon their recent search history.
Now why, you might ask, would you bother targeting with banners instead of just buying the search results? Well, it’s actually not an “instead,” it’s an “in addition to.” Everyone knows SEM delivers blockbuster results. The problem is that there are not enough instances of searches to satisfy the demand from brands. You can only buy the number of searches consumers organically make. And then only one company gets to be first on the results. And even if you are first, there is by no means a guarantee that people will buy as a direct result of seeing or even clicking on your link.
Search retargeting adds critical touch points to the bottom of the funnel ecosystem, giving brands an opportunity to follow up with consumers are clearly in consideration and buying mode. The banners appear in both contextually linked content and on quality sites where the searchers visit after their telltale searches.
Magnetic was the first company in the space, and collects more than five billion data points monthly through its partnerships with most of the leading search providers. Ergo more data. These partners provide Magnetic with 100% of their search queries, so the company can develop more precise user profiles of consumers.
But there are other distinctions as well. The data they get are mostly from search and e-commerce environments – that’s an important element of their value proposition. According to Magnetic, many search retargeting options are based upon data that come largely from sharing widgets. That’s OK, but the thing is that these widgets tend to appear more in news, blogs, and general edit than in environments where shoppers are actively looking for buying options. Think of it this way –would you rather show banners to someone who searched in a commercial environment, or on CNN?
There are a variety of ways that brands can benefit from Magnetic’s data. First, they can buy inventory direct from the company. Second, Magnetic works with other sellers, providing data to pubs and networks as a means of identifying more likely prospects. Finally, users of exchanges can also leverage the company’s information.
Founded in 2008, the company has amassed a broad range of blue chip customers. It’s an impressive list particularly because many of their customers are highly sophisticated DR marketers.
Through the use of the exchanges, Magnetic can make available inventory on virtually any type of site. For brands with very high levels of concern over brand safety, they can white list a set of sites that fulfill the advertiser’s specs. For example, many of their advertisers insist on inventory ONLY on the Comscore 250.
On the data provider side, sites need not provide data solely to Magnetic – they can continue to sell their data to companies like Yahoo, Google, and Bing. They can simply add Magnetic to their set of paying contracts and make more money. Always a good thing.
As I say, I am a big believer in this space. As a means of driving scale for transactional advertising, search retargeting can and should be a powerful extension of an SEM program. Definitely worth a look!
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
Now why, you might ask, would you bother targeting with banners instead of just buying the search results? Well, it’s actually not an “instead,” it’s an “in addition to.” Everyone knows SEM delivers blockbuster results. The problem is that there are not enough instances of searches to satisfy the demand from brands. You can only buy the number of searches consumers organically make. And then only one company gets to be first on the results. And even if you are first, there is by no means a guarantee that people will buy as a direct result of seeing or even clicking on your link.
Search retargeting adds critical touch points to the bottom of the funnel ecosystem, giving brands an opportunity to follow up with consumers are clearly in consideration and buying mode. The banners appear in both contextually linked content and on quality sites where the searchers visit after their telltale searches.
Magnetic was the first company in the space, and collects more than five billion data points monthly through its partnerships with most of the leading search providers. Ergo more data. These partners provide Magnetic with 100% of their search queries, so the company can develop more precise user profiles of consumers.
But there are other distinctions as well. The data they get are mostly from search and e-commerce environments – that’s an important element of their value proposition. According to Magnetic, many search retargeting options are based upon data that come largely from sharing widgets. That’s OK, but the thing is that these widgets tend to appear more in news, blogs, and general edit than in environments where shoppers are actively looking for buying options. Think of it this way –would you rather show banners to someone who searched in a commercial environment, or on CNN?
There are a variety of ways that brands can benefit from Magnetic’s data. First, they can buy inventory direct from the company. Second, Magnetic works with other sellers, providing data to pubs and networks as a means of identifying more likely prospects. Finally, users of exchanges can also leverage the company’s information.
Founded in 2008, the company has amassed a broad range of blue chip customers. It’s an impressive list particularly because many of their customers are highly sophisticated DR marketers.
Through the use of the exchanges, Magnetic can make available inventory on virtually any type of site. For brands with very high levels of concern over brand safety, they can white list a set of sites that fulfill the advertiser’s specs. For example, many of their advertisers insist on inventory ONLY on the Comscore 250.
On the data provider side, sites need not provide data solely to Magnetic – they can continue to sell their data to companies like Yahoo, Google, and Bing. They can simply add Magnetic to their set of paying contracts and make more money. Always a good thing.
As I say, I am a big believer in this space. As a means of driving scale for transactional advertising, search retargeting can and should be a powerful extension of an SEM program. Definitely worth a look!
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
Start Up Watch COD: Kiip delivers real world rewards during mobile gaming “achievement moments”
IMHO, mobile advertising has always been a dicey arena. We want to deliver marketing messages in this most lean forward of environments, but at the same time stay on the tolerate/detest divide. Or at least that balancing USED TO BE what drove our thinking.
A really intriguing start-up called Kiip (pronounced keep) completely utterly absolutely upends this very balancing act. Instead, they offer a remarkable and ingenious way to have people actually look forward to marketing messages. To deliver on this promise, they threw off the shackles of “screen real estate” thinking. Meaning that they are not focused on how much of a mobile screen they can fill with an ad. Rather, they pinpoint time-based opportunities when real world rewards can be provided for in-game achievements. Yep, you get actual things for doing well in mobile games.
Let’s compare and contrast two gaming scenarios to show the difference in thinking. And appeal.
Under the standard ad-supported model, ads appear in launch screens, as overlays on the game screen, and as interstitials between levels in a game. Finish level three? Watch an ad and then start playing level four. It’s certainly a serviceable model in that it is exposing a brand message to a captive audience. But in this scenario, the ads really aren’t providing consumer value. Rather they are something to be endured (or despised) because they keep us from what we want to do. Yes yes it’s just for a few seconds. But in our ADD world, they may well be very frustrating seconds for your target.
Enter Kiip. No banners or addy interstitials here. Rather, they offer players tangible, real world rewards for achievements like completing a level. Just finished level three? Yay for you. As your reward, we’re going to give you a mobile coupon for a free Dr. Pepper. Not a blob of electrons that looks like a Dr. Pepper. An actual Dr. Pepper you can go out, obtain, and enjoy.
What I love about this is how it flips the consumer's openness to the marketing message from something endured to something welcomed. Brand message receptivity goes from negative to positive. And how the real world nature of the reward ensures that the consumer exposure herself more than once to the message. See the reward, save the reward, redeem the reward.
Another aspect of this that I find intriguing is the potential to thematically tie offers to games. So, for example, getting free bacon when you exterminate the pigs in Angry Birds. Success never ever tasted so good. But anyway. Rewards are targeted demographically, so that games attracting an adolescent male audience would naturally offer different rewards than games that attract women 35+. The model is priced based upon a cost per reward redeemed basis. Tech Crunch reports a price range from 25 cents to $3 per.
Given the redemption costs and the cost pers, this isn’t a cheap way of reaching consumers. But it certainly is a rich, positive, and multilayered one. Me likey likey. Apparently I am not the only one that’s taken with this great new concept. They have already signed programs with lots of big brands, among them Sephora, Popchips, 800 Flowers, Carls Jr, Homerun, and Dr Pepper. Not bad for a company that a month ago only had a splash screen for its website.
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
A really intriguing start-up called Kiip (pronounced keep) completely utterly absolutely upends this very balancing act. Instead, they offer a remarkable and ingenious way to have people actually look forward to marketing messages. To deliver on this promise, they threw off the shackles of “screen real estate” thinking. Meaning that they are not focused on how much of a mobile screen they can fill with an ad. Rather, they pinpoint time-based opportunities when real world rewards can be provided for in-game achievements. Yep, you get actual things for doing well in mobile games.
Let’s compare and contrast two gaming scenarios to show the difference in thinking. And appeal.
Under the standard ad-supported model, ads appear in launch screens, as overlays on the game screen, and as interstitials between levels in a game. Finish level three? Watch an ad and then start playing level four. It’s certainly a serviceable model in that it is exposing a brand message to a captive audience. But in this scenario, the ads really aren’t providing consumer value. Rather they are something to be endured (or despised) because they keep us from what we want to do. Yes yes it’s just for a few seconds. But in our ADD world, they may well be very frustrating seconds for your target.
Enter Kiip. No banners or addy interstitials here. Rather, they offer players tangible, real world rewards for achievements like completing a level. Just finished level three? Yay for you. As your reward, we’re going to give you a mobile coupon for a free Dr. Pepper. Not a blob of electrons that looks like a Dr. Pepper. An actual Dr. Pepper you can go out, obtain, and enjoy.
What I love about this is how it flips the consumer's openness to the marketing message from something endured to something welcomed. Brand message receptivity goes from negative to positive. And how the real world nature of the reward ensures that the consumer exposure herself more than once to the message. See the reward, save the reward, redeem the reward.
Another aspect of this that I find intriguing is the potential to thematically tie offers to games. So, for example, getting free bacon when you exterminate the pigs in Angry Birds. Success never ever tasted so good. But anyway. Rewards are targeted demographically, so that games attracting an adolescent male audience would naturally offer different rewards than games that attract women 35+. The model is priced based upon a cost per reward redeemed basis. Tech Crunch reports a price range from 25 cents to $3 per.
Given the redemption costs and the cost pers, this isn’t a cheap way of reaching consumers. But it certainly is a rich, positive, and multilayered one. Me likey likey. Apparently I am not the only one that’s taken with this great new concept. They have already signed programs with lots of big brands, among them Sephora, Popchips, 800 Flowers, Carls Jr, Homerun, and Dr Pepper. Not bad for a company that a month ago only had a splash screen for its website.
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
Start-Up Watch COD: Compass Labs uses real-time social comments to pinpoint user interests and deliver targeted ads
How do data companies and targeting engines determine your interests? Most of them use cookies to determine the sorts of content you’re consuming and the sites you’re visiting. It’s been proven effective, But if we get real for a minute, we need to admit to ourselves that Display response rates tend to be so microscopic that even small improvements in targeting make a difference. I’m not diminishing the power of BT to improve results but rather pointing out that the standard approaches and algorithms needn’t be perfect to have an impact.
But what if we could be CERTAIN about what a consumer was interested in. More specifically, interested in buying?
Compass Labs is an interesting new company that thinks it has a way to do just that. Rather than inferring user passions and needs, it analyzes what people actually tell the world they are interested in through their social media activity.
Put it this way: Would you rather put a Cadillac banner up in front of:
A consumer that has visited a lot of luxury auto content?
Someone who just typed “I am interested in buying a Cadillac” in their Twitter status?
Of course it’s not quite as simple as that; based on what I read from my friends and connections, comments are rarely THAT obvious. But the basic principle behind Compass Labs is that more effective targeting is possible when we interpret people's comments than when we read the tea leaves of their Internet travels.
Theirs is a real-time ad targeting and serving platform that puts ads into social environments precisely when users identify their interests. These ads appear in Facebook, Twitter, social media apps, and thousands of community posting boards across the web. In total, the company says it can reach 200,000,000 web users in any given month with highly targeted messages that offer stronger response and conversion rates.
Publicly available social media information enables Compass Labs to offer a broad range of targeting options, including users’ current interests, lifestyles, purchase intent, demographics, location and other factors.
Here’s their pitch vid from last year’s Under the Radar:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10810222
As is often the case with advanced targeting, the benefits to DR marketers are obvious. But brand-side advertisers can also benefit by impacting brand perceptions among people who in earlier stages of the buying funnel.
Flipping the coin over for a sec, there are some significant benefits to the pub side as well. Obviously Facebook and Twitter benefit from more ads, and higher value impressions. But for pubs that offer forums, this stream of advertising revenue can be almost 100% incremental because it has traditionally been so hard to convince advertisers to place messages in UGC environments. Advertisers tend to fear the unknown, and forums may as well be renamed “Unknown Zone” as far as content goes.
With this new dimension of precision targeting, millions more page views can get monetized – and at strong rates.
I haven’t worked on any programs using them, but I think the concept is rather compelling, and warrants a serious look from DR and Brand advertisers.
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
But what if we could be CERTAIN about what a consumer was interested in. More specifically, interested in buying?
Compass Labs is an interesting new company that thinks it has a way to do just that. Rather than inferring user passions and needs, it analyzes what people actually tell the world they are interested in through their social media activity.
Put it this way: Would you rather put a Cadillac banner up in front of:
A consumer that has visited a lot of luxury auto content?
Someone who just typed “I am interested in buying a Cadillac” in their Twitter status?
Of course it’s not quite as simple as that; based on what I read from my friends and connections, comments are rarely THAT obvious. But the basic principle behind Compass Labs is that more effective targeting is possible when we interpret people's comments than when we read the tea leaves of their Internet travels.
Theirs is a real-time ad targeting and serving platform that puts ads into social environments precisely when users identify their interests. These ads appear in Facebook, Twitter, social media apps, and thousands of community posting boards across the web. In total, the company says it can reach 200,000,000 web users in any given month with highly targeted messages that offer stronger response and conversion rates.
Publicly available social media information enables Compass Labs to offer a broad range of targeting options, including users’ current interests, lifestyles, purchase intent, demographics, location and other factors.
Here’s their pitch vid from last year’s Under the Radar:
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/10810222
As is often the case with advanced targeting, the benefits to DR marketers are obvious. But brand-side advertisers can also benefit by impacting brand perceptions among people who in earlier stages of the buying funnel.
Flipping the coin over for a sec, there are some significant benefits to the pub side as well. Obviously Facebook and Twitter benefit from more ads, and higher value impressions. But for pubs that offer forums, this stream of advertising revenue can be almost 100% incremental because it has traditionally been so hard to convince advertisers to place messages in UGC environments. Advertisers tend to fear the unknown, and forums may as well be renamed “Unknown Zone” as far as content goes.
With this new dimension of precision targeting, millions more page views can get monetized – and at strong rates.
I haven’t worked on any programs using them, but I think the concept is rather compelling, and warrants a serious look from DR and Brand advertisers.
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
Start-Up Watch COD: Social Twist delivers strategic precision in digital promotions
The digital world is becoming packed with start-ups focused on finding new ways to distribute coupons. I don’t like most of them one bit. The last thing we need to be doing in digital is creating more platforms that destroy brand value.
But there ARE good reasons and good ways to distribute promotional offers. And in my view, one of the “good guys” in digital promotions is Social Twist, a platform that helps brands deliver more powerful promotional periods by incenting users to distribute offers and information to their friends.
The big difference between Social Twist and so many of the other coupon distributing schemes is strategic precision. This company understands that in order to deliver a promotion with genuine brand-enhancing value, you need to have tools and methods to define the scope, manner of distribution, offers, and redemption methods that jibe with brand objectives and goals. They certainly aren’t the only company that understands the need for strategic precision, but their breadth of possible solutions is unusual and rather impressive.
Specifically, Social Twist can deliver:
Social Engagement Banner ads that place sharable promotional offers in IAB ad units. Such units incorporate refer-a-friend with the discount, enabling users to pass on the good news of savings to others.
Group Buying Discounts are programs that encourage users to get their friends to pool demand for a product in exchange for a discount.
Group Couponing is the promo format that made Groupon famous.
Multivariate Offers: Referrals get any one of a set of random offers. You can also giveaway different offers for existing customers and non-customers.
Geo-Qualified Offers: This tactic leverages the propensity of consumers to share offers with eople close by, and can be a valuable tool for local or regional marketers as well as new store opendings, expanding distribution, and the like.
Refer-a-Friend Offers: These encourage consumers to share an offer.
Share Your Experience Offers: These reward consumers for posting their experiences and testimonials.
Social Coupons: These reward users who make referrals with higher value coupons.
Social Contests: These enable a contest to go social to grow participation
Social Sweepstakes: These enable a sweeps to go social to grow participation.
Here’s their intro vid:
That’s an incredibly broad range of offers, all layered with social to grow impact. Naturally, the tools that are right for an individual brand are going to vary depending upon its objectives. Their breadth of capabilities has helped Social Twist attract a broad range of blue chip advertisers, including:
In short, if you’re looking for broad-based discounting, there are any number of digital vendors that can provide it. If you need precision, it’s great to know that there are companies like Social Twist that can get granular with your goals and devise precise tactics to meet them, all layered with social sharing.
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
But there ARE good reasons and good ways to distribute promotional offers. And in my view, one of the “good guys” in digital promotions is Social Twist, a platform that helps brands deliver more powerful promotional periods by incenting users to distribute offers and information to their friends.
The big difference between Social Twist and so many of the other coupon distributing schemes is strategic precision. This company understands that in order to deliver a promotion with genuine brand-enhancing value, you need to have tools and methods to define the scope, manner of distribution, offers, and redemption methods that jibe with brand objectives and goals. They certainly aren’t the only company that understands the need for strategic precision, but their breadth of possible solutions is unusual and rather impressive.
Specifically, Social Twist can deliver:
Social Engagement Banner ads that place sharable promotional offers in IAB ad units. Such units incorporate refer-a-friend with the discount, enabling users to pass on the good news of savings to others.
Group Buying Discounts are programs that encourage users to get their friends to pool demand for a product in exchange for a discount.
Group Couponing is the promo format that made Groupon famous.
Multivariate Offers: Referrals get any one of a set of random offers. You can also giveaway different offers for existing customers and non-customers.
Geo-Qualified Offers: This tactic leverages the propensity of consumers to share offers with eople close by, and can be a valuable tool for local or regional marketers as well as new store opendings, expanding distribution, and the like.
Refer-a-Friend Offers: These encourage consumers to share an offer.
Share Your Experience Offers: These reward consumers for posting their experiences and testimonials.
Social Coupons: These reward users who make referrals with higher value coupons.
Social Contests: These enable a contest to go social to grow participation
Social Sweepstakes: These enable a sweeps to go social to grow participation.
Here’s their intro vid:
That’s an incredibly broad range of offers, all layered with social to grow impact. Naturally, the tools that are right for an individual brand are going to vary depending upon its objectives. Their breadth of capabilities has helped Social Twist attract a broad range of blue chip advertisers, including:
In short, if you’re looking for broad-based discounting, there are any number of digital vendors that can provide it. If you need precision, it’s great to know that there are companies like Social Twist that can get granular with your goals and devise precise tactics to meet them, all layered with social sharing.
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
Start-Up Watch COD: CodeBaby delivers website avatars to help users understand what you can do for them
People consume information in different ways. Or at least they would if different ways were available to them. While those of us that spend huge amounts of time on the web are very adept at figuring out where to go on a website, and what to do, many other people find it challenging. Or boring. Or difficult. Or impossible.
Or just not pleasant. For example, data indicate that men and women browse differently. When you think about the percentage of UI people and web designers that are male, do you think it’s possible that some web pages aren’t entirely optimized for female viewers? This is a broad example, but I am sure you get the implications. Many of our careers live and die by site metrics, and small steps that can improve those metrics can make our professional lives…richer. Pun intended.
Which brings me to an interesting company and offering called CodeBaby, which creates attractive animated avatars that can be included on websites and in elearning products to help differentiate offerings and make them easier to understand.
Companies can create custom CodeBaby characters that reflect the essence of their products. For example, the child protection offering NetNanny uses a – wait for it – Nanny to introduce their services and describe why they are important. The Nanny also takes users step by step through how to sign up for a trial.
There are five core benefits to using CodeBaby:
Emotional Connection: While on a basic level people realize that these animated avatars are not people, the familiarity of a person to “person” experience may make them more comfortable and engaged, and more likely to buy.
Drive Desired Behaviors: CodeBaby increases the likelihood and instances of users taking desired actions, improving site metrics as important as sales, revenue, and trial.
In-Page Interactivity: The CodeBaby offering can enable characters to interact with actual page content and navigation elements. You can light up a “buy” button or highlight content and offerings to help users find what they are looking for.
Standards Based Integration: The company prides itself on ease of implementation and safety.
Analytics and measurement: Using key metrics the client can optimize and fine tune its CodeBaby experience to optimize desired metrics.
The key to a technology like this is making it available, but not distracting. As I scrounge for information on a daily basis I find many sites with tools and concepts that get in the way rather than help. As a site designs its CodeBaby program, it needs to take that sort of thing very seriously.
Perhaps the best way to give you a sense of this platform is to show you a CodeBaby. Here’s an example from an online retail site that sells stained glass. It features the voice of the proprietor, which I think adds a nice authenticity and personal touch to this implementation:
Pricing for this service varies based upon both the number of views per month a site drives, and the number of segments in its CodeBaby program. Prices go from $299 a month for a small site and nine or less segments, on up. There is a one-time implementation fee to begin a program of twice the monthly fee.
If find this concept intriguing. Those of us living in the SV bubble often forget that not everyone lives like us. Particularly if your site focuses on reaching and converting “regular people” who CAN imagine an afternoon without a celly or a PC connection, I think this is something for you to consider.
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
Or just not pleasant. For example, data indicate that men and women browse differently. When you think about the percentage of UI people and web designers that are male, do you think it’s possible that some web pages aren’t entirely optimized for female viewers? This is a broad example, but I am sure you get the implications. Many of our careers live and die by site metrics, and small steps that can improve those metrics can make our professional lives…richer. Pun intended.
Which brings me to an interesting company and offering called CodeBaby, which creates attractive animated avatars that can be included on websites and in elearning products to help differentiate offerings and make them easier to understand.
Companies can create custom CodeBaby characters that reflect the essence of their products. For example, the child protection offering NetNanny uses a – wait for it – Nanny to introduce their services and describe why they are important. The Nanny also takes users step by step through how to sign up for a trial.
There are five core benefits to using CodeBaby:
Emotional Connection: While on a basic level people realize that these animated avatars are not people, the familiarity of a person to “person” experience may make them more comfortable and engaged, and more likely to buy.
Drive Desired Behaviors: CodeBaby increases the likelihood and instances of users taking desired actions, improving site metrics as important as sales, revenue, and trial.
In-Page Interactivity: The CodeBaby offering can enable characters to interact with actual page content and navigation elements. You can light up a “buy” button or highlight content and offerings to help users find what they are looking for.
Standards Based Integration: The company prides itself on ease of implementation and safety.
Analytics and measurement: Using key metrics the client can optimize and fine tune its CodeBaby experience to optimize desired metrics.
The key to a technology like this is making it available, but not distracting. As I scrounge for information on a daily basis I find many sites with tools and concepts that get in the way rather than help. As a site designs its CodeBaby program, it needs to take that sort of thing very seriously.
Perhaps the best way to give you a sense of this platform is to show you a CodeBaby. Here’s an example from an online retail site that sells stained glass. It features the voice of the proprietor, which I think adds a nice authenticity and personal touch to this implementation:
Pricing for this service varies based upon both the number of views per month a site drives, and the number of segments in its CodeBaby program. Prices go from $299 a month for a small site and nine or less segments, on up. There is a one-time implementation fee to begin a program of twice the monthly fee.
If find this concept intriguing. Those of us living in the SV bubble often forget that not everyone lives like us. Particularly if your site focuses on reaching and converting “regular people” who CAN imagine an afternoon without a celly or a PC connection, I think this is something for you to consider.
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
Start-Up Watch COD: Adapt.ly makes advertising across the social web a breeze
A few weeks ago during ad:tech, I saw a company called Adaptly compete in the Social category of the Start-Up Spotlight competition. They faced stiff competition, and while they did not win, there was this sort of divide in the audience of perhaps 200 people – half the room seemed absolutely rapt by the offering, while the other half saw value, but didn’t appear to have a near religious experience watching their presentation.
I am convinced that the divide was between those who regularly purchase media – especially social media – and those a few steps away from this task.
Because if you buy media, you saw tremendous utility. As part of their assignment, Social companies were asked how they would spend $500K on behalf of a client. What adapt.ly did was LITERALLY book and launch a campaign with $500K in spending.
In about three minutes.
For rather than talking on a high level about the philosophy behind their offering, they launched their social buying platform and defined targets and spends for a number of social sites and opportunities.
Let me back up a minute. What adapt.ly offers is a buying, management, and reporting platform for advertising across a broad range of social media platforms. All from a single web-based console. Where can you buy ads? Check out this list:
Facebook
Twitter
Linked In
Stumble Upon
MySpace
AdMob
Plenty of Fish
As you know, each of these platforms offers ads in very different formats, and each of their self serve buying platforms works differently. Adapt.ly:
Provides a management layer between you and the social venues, so that you can buy everything you want from a single interface.
Automatically versions ads if you desire to optimize performance. In effect, they make the process of testing hundreds of copy versions automatic.
Offer real-time performance information
Provides the tools to enable you to quickly reallocate resources to stronger performers, or adjust your targeting specs to take a different tack in advertising on some or all of the values.
While I don’t buy much social advertising, I do so occasionally, chiefly for B2B clients, and the speed and ease of Adapt.ly really impressed me. So too did the idea of the automatic copy testing. In my view, far too little attention is placed on copy testing in text ads, and Adaptly offers a powerful and simple solution to capitalize on the untapped opportunity.
Here’s a vid that shows the platform in action:
The other reason I liked this idea is that Adapt.ly clearly understands the need for scale in social. It’s all very well and good that there are tools that enable brands to reach a hundred or even a thousand super influencers, but big brands with big budgets need ways to drive reach and other metrics at critical mass scale. If you are in 30% of US households, it’s difficult for 100 influencers make a meaningful impact on the bottom line, no matter how powerful they may be. And no brand or agency has the resources to spend $20,000,000 or $100,000,000 $25K at a time.
Adapt.ly has stepped into this need gap in a big way, and I for one will be watching them closely over the next months and years. Hard to imagine a concept with more appeal than making the ridiculously complicated process of buying social media so much simpler. This team has got something big on their hands.
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
I am convinced that the divide was between those who regularly purchase media – especially social media – and those a few steps away from this task.
Because if you buy media, you saw tremendous utility. As part of their assignment, Social companies were asked how they would spend $500K on behalf of a client. What adapt.ly did was LITERALLY book and launch a campaign with $500K in spending.
In about three minutes.
For rather than talking on a high level about the philosophy behind their offering, they launched their social buying platform and defined targets and spends for a number of social sites and opportunities.
Let me back up a minute. What adapt.ly offers is a buying, management, and reporting platform for advertising across a broad range of social media platforms. All from a single web-based console. Where can you buy ads? Check out this list:
Linked In
Stumble Upon
MySpace
AdMob
Plenty of Fish
As you know, each of these platforms offers ads in very different formats, and each of their self serve buying platforms works differently. Adapt.ly:
Provides a management layer between you and the social venues, so that you can buy everything you want from a single interface.
Automatically versions ads if you desire to optimize performance. In effect, they make the process of testing hundreds of copy versions automatic.
Offer real-time performance information
Provides the tools to enable you to quickly reallocate resources to stronger performers, or adjust your targeting specs to take a different tack in advertising on some or all of the values.
While I don’t buy much social advertising, I do so occasionally, chiefly for B2B clients, and the speed and ease of Adapt.ly really impressed me. So too did the idea of the automatic copy testing. In my view, far too little attention is placed on copy testing in text ads, and Adaptly offers a powerful and simple solution to capitalize on the untapped opportunity.
Here’s a vid that shows the platform in action:
The other reason I liked this idea is that Adapt.ly clearly understands the need for scale in social. It’s all very well and good that there are tools that enable brands to reach a hundred or even a thousand super influencers, but big brands with big budgets need ways to drive reach and other metrics at critical mass scale. If you are in 30% of US households, it’s difficult for 100 influencers make a meaningful impact on the bottom line, no matter how powerful they may be. And no brand or agency has the resources to spend $20,000,000 or $100,000,000 $25K at a time.
Adapt.ly has stepped into this need gap in a big way, and I for one will be watching them closely over the next months and years. Hard to imagine a concept with more appeal than making the ridiculously complicated process of buying social media so much simpler. This team has got something big on their hands.
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
Start-Up Watch COD: Addroid replaces the video middleman with a middleSaaS
Digital media is ridiculously complicated to buy and to develop creative for. Anything that makes that process simpler, faster, and cheaper is likely in a great place to get adopted and gain significant market traction.
Which is why Addroid is garnering more and more attention in our business. Addroid is a SaaS-based ad development environment and solution that makes it easy to make video ads to run in IAB banner sizes. Their goal is to replace expensive middleman technologies like the rich media providers with a drag and drop solution that creates an attractive add more or less immediately.
The cost structure of running video can be pricey. Serving a video ad is significantly more expensive than a Flash banner. According to Addroid, using one of the major rich media solutions companies (MediaMind, EyeWonder, PointRoll, and even DoubleClick) adds a cost of about 40 cents to the CPM versus a gif banner. Their platform takes that down to 15 cents.
Developed by an agency called Neoganda, Addroid is web-based, and provides an ad development environment where you quickly add creative elements and publish a video ad.
Here’s a video where their Founder explains the value proposition and shows the drop dead simple process of ad development:
If you watched the video, you learned that going after the rich media company business is only part of their vision. They believe that brands and agencies would develop a lot more video ads instead of Flash banners if they could. By significantly reducing the video markup, they believe that they have created a pricing sweet spot to drive a dramatic transition in the industry.
Lemme tell me why I think they are on to something big. There are entire industries like entertainment and auto that would surely drop Flash but quick if video were more affordable. But many of the categories that would be most interested in making such a change are very value-oriented.
Oh, let’s call a spade a spade. These categories are filled with cheap sumbitches, though I don’t mean that as an insult. Let’s take entertainment as a for instance. When you have only a couple weeks and a limited budget to hype a film, you need to make every impression and every dollar count. So we shouldn’t be surprised that their buyers don’t throw money around willy nilly.
Which is why, I think, we still see Flash banners for some movies and TV programs, even though video would surely be more compelling.
A reduction from 40 cents to 15 cents represents a big drop in cost structure.
And there’s another cool thing. By replacing Flash banners with HTML video units, advertisers can better reach and persuade tablet users, 99 and 44/100s of whom are on iPads that don’t run Flash.
The name threw me a bit. I was expecting a mobile solution. But no matter, it is clearly designed to communicate the idea that they have replaced the middleman with a droid – or rather a SaaS.
So adding that up. Cheaper. HTML 5. Cheaper. Faster. And cheaper. I would imagine that more than a few of those reading this are already dialing.
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
Which is why Addroid is garnering more and more attention in our business. Addroid is a SaaS-based ad development environment and solution that makes it easy to make video ads to run in IAB banner sizes. Their goal is to replace expensive middleman technologies like the rich media providers with a drag and drop solution that creates an attractive add more or less immediately.
The cost structure of running video can be pricey. Serving a video ad is significantly more expensive than a Flash banner. According to Addroid, using one of the major rich media solutions companies (MediaMind, EyeWonder, PointRoll, and even DoubleClick) adds a cost of about 40 cents to the CPM versus a gif banner. Their platform takes that down to 15 cents.
Developed by an agency called Neoganda, Addroid is web-based, and provides an ad development environment where you quickly add creative elements and publish a video ad.
Here’s a video where their Founder explains the value proposition and shows the drop dead simple process of ad development:
Addroid Demo from Matt Cooper on Vimeo.
If you watched the video, you learned that going after the rich media company business is only part of their vision. They believe that brands and agencies would develop a lot more video ads instead of Flash banners if they could. By significantly reducing the video markup, they believe that they have created a pricing sweet spot to drive a dramatic transition in the industry.
Lemme tell me why I think they are on to something big. There are entire industries like entertainment and auto that would surely drop Flash but quick if video were more affordable. But many of the categories that would be most interested in making such a change are very value-oriented.
Oh, let’s call a spade a spade. These categories are filled with cheap sumbitches, though I don’t mean that as an insult. Let’s take entertainment as a for instance. When you have only a couple weeks and a limited budget to hype a film, you need to make every impression and every dollar count. So we shouldn’t be surprised that their buyers don’t throw money around willy nilly.
Which is why, I think, we still see Flash banners for some movies and TV programs, even though video would surely be more compelling.
A reduction from 40 cents to 15 cents represents a big drop in cost structure.
And there’s another cool thing. By replacing Flash banners with HTML video units, advertisers can better reach and persuade tablet users, 99 and 44/100s of whom are on iPads that don’t run Flash.
The name threw me a bit. I was expecting a mobile solution. But no matter, it is clearly designed to communicate the idea that they have replaced the middleman with a droid – or rather a SaaS.
So adding that up. Cheaper. HTML 5. Cheaper. Faster. And cheaper. I would imagine that more than a few of those reading this are already dialing.
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
Start-Up Watch COD: Ample Media drives better contact acquisition, maintenance, and insights
Many companies spend a large part of their digital budgets for the purpose of acquiring contact information to power CRM programs. But as these contacts are acquired, a sizable portion of them have errors that snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. By which I mean that you spent all that money for the click and visit, got them to the form, but because they made errors in their data entry, their input makes them unreachable. You’re out all that money, and they are out the opportunity to hear more about your business and what it can do for them.
I met someone from Ample Media at ad:tech and was fascinated to learn more about their service. There are a variety of components, but the part that was most compelling to me was their ability to help users correct mistakes that they make in entering their data – and correct them in real time.
Let me explain with an example. Let’s say I reach a contact for and enter my email address as:
Oldseeksnewyahoo.com
The platform analyzes my input and recognizes that it is an invalid email address. So it alters me to that fact and gives me the opportunity to correct my error. But by now you know me well enough that I am fully capable of making two mistakes in a row. So I type…
Oldeseeksnew@yahoo.com
Notice the extra e after old. Their platform checks the Yahoo database in real time and discovers that Oldeseeksnew@yahoo.com is not a valid email. So it gives me the opportunity to get it right again. And with any luck the third time will be a charm and I will finally get it right.
It also works on phone contacts, recognizing invalid area codes and numbers and giving users the opportunity to correct an entry. For postal addresses, their solution can check to ensure that an address exists, and append the consumer-delivered entry with additional info like zip plus four that can significantly reduce your mailing costs. Their platform also monitors for obviously bad phone, email, and postal addresses submitted by malicious actors so that you aren’t carrying bum entries in your data that increase email serving and data management costs.
Those are all what they call the Point of Entry services. But their offering also helps improve the validity and value of an existing database by refreshing existing entries with newer information and appending additional data that can empower segmentation and research insights.
For some, these services may seem like nice-to-haves rather than need-to-haves. But depending upon your customer base, the losses and additional costs mitigated by services like those of Ample Media can make a significant difference in both valid acquisitions and the usefulness and economic value of a database over time. If you are going to the trouble of BUILDING a database, it should be fairly simple to understand why those types of benefits can make a real difference in your bottom line.
As I said, the whiz banginess for me was the real time aspect that helps users ensure that they input correct data. We all know what a tremendous savings having user-submitted data provides. But more accurate data entry will naturally drive even more value from this important marketing resource.
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first
I met someone from Ample Media at ad:tech and was fascinated to learn more about their service. There are a variety of components, but the part that was most compelling to me was their ability to help users correct mistakes that they make in entering their data – and correct them in real time.
Let me explain with an example. Let’s say I reach a contact for and enter my email address as:
Oldseeksnewyahoo.com
The platform analyzes my input and recognizes that it is an invalid email address. So it alters me to that fact and gives me the opportunity to correct my error. But by now you know me well enough that I am fully capable of making two mistakes in a row. So I type…
Oldeseeksnew@yahoo.com
Notice the extra e after old. Their platform checks the Yahoo database in real time and discovers that Oldeseeksnew@yahoo.com is not a valid email. So it gives me the opportunity to get it right again. And with any luck the third time will be a charm and I will finally get it right.
It also works on phone contacts, recognizing invalid area codes and numbers and giving users the opportunity to correct an entry. For postal addresses, their solution can check to ensure that an address exists, and append the consumer-delivered entry with additional info like zip plus four that can significantly reduce your mailing costs. Their platform also monitors for obviously bad phone, email, and postal addresses submitted by malicious actors so that you aren’t carrying bum entries in your data that increase email serving and data management costs.
Those are all what they call the Point of Entry services. But their offering also helps improve the validity and value of an existing database by refreshing existing entries with newer information and appending additional data that can empower segmentation and research insights.
For some, these services may seem like nice-to-haves rather than need-to-haves. But depending upon your customer base, the losses and additional costs mitigated by services like those of Ample Media can make a significant difference in both valid acquisitions and the usefulness and economic value of a database over time. If you are going to the trouble of BUILDING a database, it should be fairly simple to understand why those types of benefits can make a real difference in your bottom line.
As I said, the whiz banginess for me was the real time aspect that helps users ensure that they input correct data. We all know what a tremendous savings having user-submitted data provides. But more accurate data entry will naturally drive even more value from this important marketing resource.
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Start-Up Watch COD: CardMunch makes getting contacts from business cards remarkably easy
Today’s post is about personal productivity rather than marketing services, but the problem it solves is so ubiquitous I hope you’ll find it useful.
CardMunch is an app (recently acquired by Linked In) that makes it point and shoot easy to build a database of contacts from all those business cards gathering dust in your drawer. We all know that there are card readers out there, but they can be inconvenient, a little pricey, and some have significant accuracy issues. They can also offer odd quirks, like the use of proprietary DB platforms only.
The accuracy issues have been exacerbated by the fashion of making credit cards more creative and visually interesting. Two sides of contact info, or unusual arrangements of data, or perpendicular/angled text, all pose significant challenges. Certainly in the marketing services industry the tendency to be more creative in the presentation of info on a business card is even more common.
CardMunch solves those problems with a combination of image recognition and human QA. To use the service, you simply take photos of your business cards with your iPhone. The app handles the rest. An image reader identifies and transcribes the contact into a database, and then the image and the database entry are passed to a team of people who review the record created and make any necessary corrections.
Records are collected in a contacts database on your phone that can be viewed in a “cover flow.” You can also connect your records to Linked In with a single click. When you synch your phone, you will also be synching your contacts, which helps make your new database of contacts even more useful.
You can collect records in two separate databases, one business and one personal. That’s an important feature, in my view, given the number of business cards one collects over the course of a month.
The human element of this service is a critical part of the work flow because even a high degree of accuracy – like 90-95% - means that there can be serious errors in virtually any record. A transposed digit, or a misread digit, for example, makes an entire record useless. CardMunch’s approach completely prevents this problem.
Here’s a short video explaining it all.
The service offers 5 card reads for free. After that, you can buy credits in the app or on their website. At the time of this writing, the service was offering free credits to get its start – my suspicion is that when they shift to a pay model, the costs will still be rather reasonable.
The service was launched on iPhone, with plans to expand to Android and Blackberry quickly. Speaking as an Android user and a Linked In junkie, the expansion can’t come soon enough! My groaning, overstuffed card file will be even more pleased when it happens.
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
CardMunch is an app (recently acquired by Linked In) that makes it point and shoot easy to build a database of contacts from all those business cards gathering dust in your drawer. We all know that there are card readers out there, but they can be inconvenient, a little pricey, and some have significant accuracy issues. They can also offer odd quirks, like the use of proprietary DB platforms only.
The accuracy issues have been exacerbated by the fashion of making credit cards more creative and visually interesting. Two sides of contact info, or unusual arrangements of data, or perpendicular/angled text, all pose significant challenges. Certainly in the marketing services industry the tendency to be more creative in the presentation of info on a business card is even more common.
CardMunch solves those problems with a combination of image recognition and human QA. To use the service, you simply take photos of your business cards with your iPhone. The app handles the rest. An image reader identifies and transcribes the contact into a database, and then the image and the database entry are passed to a team of people who review the record created and make any necessary corrections.
Records are collected in a contacts database on your phone that can be viewed in a “cover flow.” You can also connect your records to Linked In with a single click. When you synch your phone, you will also be synching your contacts, which helps make your new database of contacts even more useful.
You can collect records in two separate databases, one business and one personal. That’s an important feature, in my view, given the number of business cards one collects over the course of a month.
The human element of this service is a critical part of the work flow because even a high degree of accuracy – like 90-95% - means that there can be serious errors in virtually any record. A transposed digit, or a misread digit, for example, makes an entire record useless. CardMunch’s approach completely prevents this problem.
Here’s a short video explaining it all.
Overview of CardMunch in 21 Seconds from CardMunch on Vimeo.
The service offers 5 card reads for free. After that, you can buy credits in the app or on their website. At the time of this writing, the service was offering free credits to get its start – my suspicion is that when they shift to a pay model, the costs will still be rather reasonable.
The service was launched on iPhone, with plans to expand to Android and Blackberry quickly. Speaking as an Android user and a Linked In junkie, the expansion can’t come soon enough! My groaning, overstuffed card file will be even more pleased when it happens.
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
Start-Up Watch COD: Retailigence Connects Mobile Apps to Local Retail Inventories
Local shopping apps are increasing in number and popularity. Essentially what they do is help consumers understand where they can obtain an item in their immediate vicinity.
A company called Retailigence helps retailers, brands and agencies communicate local availability of products to web and mobile apps via its free and open API. It connects inventory management systems to the mobile web, so that as users of apps search for products, partner stores’ inventory can appear in the results. It’s a cloud-based Data as a Service (DaaS) solution providing seamless access to thousands of retailers and a host of end-user applications.
Say you are a shopper in the market for a Nikon Coolpix S5100. You use your phone to find out where to get one. When you make your query in a shopping app, Retailigence facilitates listings by providing data that they have aggregated from the inventory management systems of local stores. If a nearby retailer stocked the item and had one in stock, Retailigence would ensure that the app listed that local retailer in the results.
Here’s a vid that explains the concept:
Retailigence currently has access to the inventory of more than 65,000 retail locations, and works with most of the major back-end inventory management systems. In fact, Retailigence recently announced partnerships with ERP and POS systems like ERPLY and B2B Soft. The total number of products in their database exceeds 5M, across a large number of retail categories like electronics, apparel, books, games, toys, etc.
Without using a service like Retailigence, brick-and-mortar retailers are generally left out of online and mobile search results. Even though shoppers may be standing right outside a store , they won’t be aware that the store can fill their needs. Instead, what they’d get in their search results would likely be dozens of dotcom purchase options. While many online searchers favor dotcom buying, there are millions of people who would want to purchase today in a store nearby. The local Chamber of Commerce likes that. Not to mention that shop owners.
To continue with the camera example, I did a search for a Nikon Coolpix S5100 on my Android phone. Google returned only one listing on the first page that offered a local purchase option, and even then I would have had to query that retail chain’s database on their site to check availability in stores near me. That anecdotal search demonstrates the need for local retailers to get connected. A host of apps have been built for this purpose. Retailigence powers many of these apps with rock solid inventory info.
For brands and agencies, the opportunity to partner with Retailigence has clear benefits. Marketers can ensure that Retailigence lists local retailers that stock their products. By driving more visitors to those locations, they can drive sales and be a better partner to retail organizations.
For retailers, participating in platforms like Retailigence should be a no brainer. For most stores and chains, the biggest challenge of all is getting folks in the door. Retailigence can make a big difference in their foot traffic. And chances are, those feet will be propelling souls anxious to plunk down credit cards immediately.
I’ll close with the words of Jeremy Geiger, the CEO: "Smartphones and location-based services are changing the very face of traditional retail. We are excited to be at the forefront of this revolution by driving high-intent foot traffic directly to the retailer’s doors. Our ability to deliver location-relevant inventory data to apps is not only making apps more functional and useful, it's also providing retailers (large and small) a way to be visible at the right time and at the right place.”
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
A company called Retailigence helps retailers, brands and agencies communicate local availability of products to web and mobile apps via its free and open API. It connects inventory management systems to the mobile web, so that as users of apps search for products, partner stores’ inventory can appear in the results. It’s a cloud-based Data as a Service (DaaS) solution providing seamless access to thousands of retailers and a host of end-user applications.
Say you are a shopper in the market for a Nikon Coolpix S5100. You use your phone to find out where to get one. When you make your query in a shopping app, Retailigence facilitates listings by providing data that they have aggregated from the inventory management systems of local stores. If a nearby retailer stocked the item and had one in stock, Retailigence would ensure that the app listed that local retailer in the results.
Here’s a vid that explains the concept:
Introducing Retailigence from Retailigence Corp on Vimeo.
Retailigence currently has access to the inventory of more than 65,000 retail locations, and works with most of the major back-end inventory management systems. In fact, Retailigence recently announced partnerships with ERP and POS systems like ERPLY and B2B Soft. The total number of products in their database exceeds 5M, across a large number of retail categories like electronics, apparel, books, games, toys, etc.
Without using a service like Retailigence, brick-and-mortar retailers are generally left out of online and mobile search results. Even though shoppers may be standing right outside a store , they won’t be aware that the store can fill their needs. Instead, what they’d get in their search results would likely be dozens of dotcom purchase options. While many online searchers favor dotcom buying, there are millions of people who would want to purchase today in a store nearby. The local Chamber of Commerce likes that. Not to mention that shop owners.
To continue with the camera example, I did a search for a Nikon Coolpix S5100 on my Android phone. Google returned only one listing on the first page that offered a local purchase option, and even then I would have had to query that retail chain’s database on their site to check availability in stores near me. That anecdotal search demonstrates the need for local retailers to get connected. A host of apps have been built for this purpose. Retailigence powers many of these apps with rock solid inventory info.
For brands and agencies, the opportunity to partner with Retailigence has clear benefits. Marketers can ensure that Retailigence lists local retailers that stock their products. By driving more visitors to those locations, they can drive sales and be a better partner to retail organizations.
For retailers, participating in platforms like Retailigence should be a no brainer. For most stores and chains, the biggest challenge of all is getting folks in the door. Retailigence can make a big difference in their foot traffic. And chances are, those feet will be propelling souls anxious to plunk down credit cards immediately.
I’ll close with the words of Jeremy Geiger, the CEO: "Smartphones and location-based services are changing the very face of traditional retail. We are excited to be at the forefront of this revolution by driving high-intent foot traffic directly to the retailer’s doors. Our ability to deliver location-relevant inventory data to apps is not only making apps more functional and useful, it's also providing retailers (large and small) a way to be visible at the right time and at the right place.”
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
Start-Up Watch COD: Proximic improves results through the power of granular contextual and audience data
If site and audience data are key tools in the effort to get better results from online ads, it stands to reason that more precise data may make a real difference in results.
That’s what Proximic describes as its value proposition. Proximic provides more granular contextual and audience data to DSPs, networks, pubs and SSPs. The offering is based on real time analysis of the content of a page and the precise interests of your target audience. Think about their data in the context of three layers.
•More specific contextual data: Proximal offers more contextual buckets than most data vendors. So, for example, not just sports by extreme sports or snow sports. While this might have only minimal value for a brand aimed at M LDA-34, it could have profound value for products aimed at more specific sports audiences. You don’t want to try and sell skis to pro soccer fans. Or at least you might not want to. In toto, the company says that it matches content across “hundreds of thousands” of categories and reverse engineers that match to the keywords and concepts you care about.
•Highly specific brand safety data. Not just porn/no porn. There is a rating system for content maturity, violence, negativity, language, alcohol consumption, and the like. Perhaps for you G rated is essential. For another brand, the idea might be PG 13 or even R, but no X. That kind of granularity might prove very valuable if you’re selling Maxim versus Boys Life subs.
•Rich audience interest data. By collecting information about what prospects are examining, the platform can help refine contextual parameters AND expand the range of sites in your buy. This, it promises, can grow focus AND scale.
Given the correlation between user engagement and content, ad performance climbs when the user sees ads on content that is more likely to strongly reflect their interests. According to Proximic, that granularity opens up a lot more mid and long tail sites to brand advertising, which grows reach and drives down CPMs.
Here’s their elevator video:
One of the interesting twists about this data solution play is that its contextual analysis is not based upon linguistic algorithms. This means that its power is not limited to English language pages. Instead, a global brand can reach its audience across nations, languages, and cultures, focusing instead on the contextual interests that are most closely associated with brand response.
Available through the DSPs as well as to networks, pubs, and SSPs, Proximic would appear to offer benefits to the sell side in that it enables greater real time understanding of what is on all pages, so that their true value can be monetized.
One thing that I think is clear is that more brands will be widening their site selection parameters. Because audiences don’t cluster in such large numbers on the top sites anymore. Clearly Proximic exists to help brands go broad AND deep.
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
That’s what Proximic describes as its value proposition. Proximic provides more granular contextual and audience data to DSPs, networks, pubs and SSPs. The offering is based on real time analysis of the content of a page and the precise interests of your target audience. Think about their data in the context of three layers.
•More specific contextual data: Proximal offers more contextual buckets than most data vendors. So, for example, not just sports by extreme sports or snow sports. While this might have only minimal value for a brand aimed at M LDA-34, it could have profound value for products aimed at more specific sports audiences. You don’t want to try and sell skis to pro soccer fans. Or at least you might not want to. In toto, the company says that it matches content across “hundreds of thousands” of categories and reverse engineers that match to the keywords and concepts you care about.
•Highly specific brand safety data. Not just porn/no porn. There is a rating system for content maturity, violence, negativity, language, alcohol consumption, and the like. Perhaps for you G rated is essential. For another brand, the idea might be PG 13 or even R, but no X. That kind of granularity might prove very valuable if you’re selling Maxim versus Boys Life subs.
•Rich audience interest data. By collecting information about what prospects are examining, the platform can help refine contextual parameters AND expand the range of sites in your buy. This, it promises, can grow focus AND scale.
Given the correlation between user engagement and content, ad performance climbs when the user sees ads on content that is more likely to strongly reflect their interests. According to Proximic, that granularity opens up a lot more mid and long tail sites to brand advertising, which grows reach and drives down CPMs.
Here’s their elevator video:
One of the interesting twists about this data solution play is that its contextual analysis is not based upon linguistic algorithms. This means that its power is not limited to English language pages. Instead, a global brand can reach its audience across nations, languages, and cultures, focusing instead on the contextual interests that are most closely associated with brand response.
Available through the DSPs as well as to networks, pubs, and SSPs, Proximic would appear to offer benefits to the sell side in that it enables greater real time understanding of what is on all pages, so that their true value can be monetized.
One thing that I think is clear is that more brands will be widening their site selection parameters. Because audiences don’t cluster in such large numbers on the top sites anymore. Clearly Proximic exists to help brands go broad AND deep.
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
COD: Vook – The platform that changes everything in book publishing
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
One of my wonkier interests is book marketing – a field with its own rules, realities, and best practices. I’ve heard that ultimately the industry is built on only a couple million consumers. OK, cookbooks can get beyond that core set, also romance which has something like 30 million core readers, ditto catchily titled books “written” by semiliterate pro wrestlers and UFC stars. But for most of the segments, there’s this fairly tiny set of power readers that hold the walls of the biz up. Similar to how hard core gamers can make or break a title in that business. (I am guessing hard core readers and gamers are decidedly dissimilar in demos and psychographics.)
So I have been interested to see how the world reacts to Vook, a platform that combines book-style narrative text with photos, video, and social media integration. Here’s the movie:
View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
Of course, every industry is anxious to see how digital can enrich its business – publishing is no exception. Since its launch Vook has garnered a strong list of authors and titles including Seth Godin, Deepak Chopra, Anne Rice, Gary Vaynerchuk, Slash of Guns N' Roses and Karen Armstrong. Additionally, a number of the largest and more significant publishing houses in the US. including Simon and Schuster, Penguin Group, Harvard Business Press, Harper Collins and Hachette Filipacchi, are releasing broad appeal titles to Vook. There isn't a huge number of titles yet, but it’s growing steadily, and the pace is accelerating as more people try out the platform.
Vooks are available on the vook.com site, in the Amazon store for Kindle and in the app store for iPhone and iPad. Since all hype looks most over the top in the Romance genre, I give you the trailer for Promises, by Jude Deveraux. It’ll give you a sense of how the Vook format enlivens content and can enrich a story.
View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
Obviously, only a small number of people who read these posts are in the book trade. But Vook is significant on a pan-digital industry level for a couple of reasons.
First, it demonstrates how digital can transform mature categories and add interactivity and exchange to seemingly staid, traditional businesses.
Second, the Vook format seems an interesting potential platform for marketing messages at some point in the future. Would consumers interact with multimedia brand experiences if they enriched book content? Absolutely, I think. Imagine a “cozy” mystery series, with video and enactments in a Starbucks, or a way to send virtual cups of coffee to friends.
Third is about audience extension, and how digital may be able to broaden the appeal of a category. Anyone who has been to my house knows that I am part of that small population segment that drives publishing. I have perhaps 4,000 books in my house, on shelves that climb 14 feet into the air and pretty much cover every wall surface in my tiny unit.
I can certainly see myself enjoying a Vook, particularly in certain emotional genres. For example, the ability to see The Last Supper while reading Da Vinci Code, or having a vid move in and out and make clearer the hidden symbols, yadda yadda. And WHAT A WAY to promote movies based upon books!
But the question really is, will the Vook open up new population segments to more frequent reading? Or even any reading at all?
I bet that Vooks can increase the number of titles read by light and medium category buyers, but that the non reader will remain so, despite the advent of the Vook. Perhaps more importantly, Vook and Vook trailers will offer the opportunity to better communicate a story than can cover or spine art, and that’s good news as well.
The social angle is fascinating. Reading is of course nearly always a solitary act, but the incredible growth in the number of book clubs demonstrates that readers want to be able to share their experiences. Vook integrates social right into the platform, which offers the added benefit of driving awareness and personal endorsements for titles. Marketers may also find the cohesive demos of certain book genres irresistible as well.
Whatever you think of the concept, Vook is definitely worth watching. Will it succeed? Will it be a niche? Only time will tell. In the meantime, it’s time for me to get back to watching The Raven.
One of my wonkier interests is book marketing – a field with its own rules, realities, and best practices. I’ve heard that ultimately the industry is built on only a couple million consumers. OK, cookbooks can get beyond that core set, also romance which has something like 30 million core readers, ditto catchily titled books “written” by semiliterate pro wrestlers and UFC stars. But for most of the segments, there’s this fairly tiny set of power readers that hold the walls of the biz up. Similar to how hard core gamers can make or break a title in that business. (I am guessing hard core readers and gamers are decidedly dissimilar in demos and psychographics.)
So I have been interested to see how the world reacts to Vook, a platform that combines book-style narrative text with photos, video, and social media integration. Here’s the movie:
View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
Of course, every industry is anxious to see how digital can enrich its business – publishing is no exception. Since its launch Vook has garnered a strong list of authors and titles including Seth Godin, Deepak Chopra, Anne Rice, Gary Vaynerchuk, Slash of Guns N' Roses and Karen Armstrong. Additionally, a number of the largest and more significant publishing houses in the US. including Simon and Schuster, Penguin Group, Harvard Business Press, Harper Collins and Hachette Filipacchi, are releasing broad appeal titles to Vook. There isn't a huge number of titles yet, but it’s growing steadily, and the pace is accelerating as more people try out the platform.
Vooks are available on the vook.com site, in the Amazon store for Kindle and in the app store for iPhone and iPad. Since all hype looks most over the top in the Romance genre, I give you the trailer for Promises, by Jude Deveraux. It’ll give you a sense of how the Vook format enlivens content and can enrich a story.
View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com
Obviously, only a small number of people who read these posts are in the book trade. But Vook is significant on a pan-digital industry level for a couple of reasons.
First, it demonstrates how digital can transform mature categories and add interactivity and exchange to seemingly staid, traditional businesses.
Second, the Vook format seems an interesting potential platform for marketing messages at some point in the future. Would consumers interact with multimedia brand experiences if they enriched book content? Absolutely, I think. Imagine a “cozy” mystery series, with video and enactments in a Starbucks, or a way to send virtual cups of coffee to friends.
Third is about audience extension, and how digital may be able to broaden the appeal of a category. Anyone who has been to my house knows that I am part of that small population segment that drives publishing. I have perhaps 4,000 books in my house, on shelves that climb 14 feet into the air and pretty much cover every wall surface in my tiny unit.
I can certainly see myself enjoying a Vook, particularly in certain emotional genres. For example, the ability to see The Last Supper while reading Da Vinci Code, or having a vid move in and out and make clearer the hidden symbols, yadda yadda. And WHAT A WAY to promote movies based upon books!
But the question really is, will the Vook open up new population segments to more frequent reading? Or even any reading at all?
I bet that Vooks can increase the number of titles read by light and medium category buyers, but that the non reader will remain so, despite the advent of the Vook. Perhaps more importantly, Vook and Vook trailers will offer the opportunity to better communicate a story than can cover or spine art, and that’s good news as well.
The social angle is fascinating. Reading is of course nearly always a solitary act, but the incredible growth in the number of book clubs demonstrates that readers want to be able to share their experiences. Vook integrates social right into the platform, which offers the added benefit of driving awareness and personal endorsements for titles. Marketers may also find the cohesive demos of certain book genres irresistible as well.
Whatever you think of the concept, Vook is definitely worth watching. Will it succeed? Will it be a niche? Only time will tell. In the meantime, it’s time for me to get back to watching The Raven.
COD: Noblivity and the new product distribution paradigm
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
Lots of businesses struggle with product distribution issues. The process and cost of traditional distribution building efforts make it particularly difficult for emerging brands to get out there in a serious way. Lots of large retailer classes charge huge slotting fees, and may also have draconian application processes. Additionally, small retailers can also be difficult to reach because the system to close them was traditionally geared to in-person meetings.
But digital holds the power to change that. And a website called Noblivity is out to make that power felt in the fashion industry. The site bills itself as a virtual trade show that connects small brands and upcoming designers with boutiques that are seeking unique items.
The service holds enormous potential value for both sides of the exchange. It helps the small brands while enabling smaller retailers to compete better with larger stores. Small retailers depend upon stocking unusual and unique inventory in order to compete. They cannot battle on price for like items, so instead they focus on goods that you cannot get at Gapbebeandfexpressfcukandapatridgeinapeartree.
The service enables stores to buy directly through the site and get a single invoice for merchandise they purchase, how ever many merchants they choose to patronize. Sellers get worldwide retail reach, and the performance pricing model eliminates fixed costs. Presumably they take a cut of sales, though based upon the press they get from buyers and sellers, it must be an eminently reasonable one.
Again, I think this model should be interesting to you regardless of whether you are (indulge me for a moment, I’ve always wanted to use this phrase in business writing!) "in the rag trade." Because it shows yet another way that digital has the power to upend the status quo and democratize an aspect of business that needs it.
The site also offers a good blog with lots of tips and advice for businesses on either side of the equation.
Good stuff.
Lots of businesses struggle with product distribution issues. The process and cost of traditional distribution building efforts make it particularly difficult for emerging brands to get out there in a serious way. Lots of large retailer classes charge huge slotting fees, and may also have draconian application processes. Additionally, small retailers can also be difficult to reach because the system to close them was traditionally geared to in-person meetings.
But digital holds the power to change that. And a website called Noblivity is out to make that power felt in the fashion industry. The site bills itself as a virtual trade show that connects small brands and upcoming designers with boutiques that are seeking unique items.
The service holds enormous potential value for both sides of the exchange. It helps the small brands while enabling smaller retailers to compete better with larger stores. Small retailers depend upon stocking unusual and unique inventory in order to compete. They cannot battle on price for like items, so instead they focus on goods that you cannot get at Gapbebeandfexpressfcukandapatridgeinapeartree.
The service enables stores to buy directly through the site and get a single invoice for merchandise they purchase, how ever many merchants they choose to patronize. Sellers get worldwide retail reach, and the performance pricing model eliminates fixed costs. Presumably they take a cut of sales, though based upon the press they get from buyers and sellers, it must be an eminently reasonable one.
Again, I think this model should be interesting to you regardless of whether you are (indulge me for a moment, I’ve always wanted to use this phrase in business writing!) "in the rag trade." Because it shows yet another way that digital has the power to upend the status quo and democratize an aspect of business that needs it.
The site also offers a good blog with lots of tips and advice for businesses on either side of the equation.
Good stuff.
Friday, March 4, 2011
COD: OneScreen is working to bring the video ecosystem togetha
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
Sometimes it seems like video is everywhere. But it isn’t. And the widely touted democratization of video content means lots more creative people can make a killing on ad supported content. It’s not so simple. And sometimes people tout the dramatic increase in the amount of premium video content as an indication that brands can get however much they want, whenever they want it. But that’s not true either.
How ever much we want to make the digital CW an either or proposition, the world of video is definitely not so compartmentalized and “tidy.”
Whatever the reason, there are plenty of brands, sites, and content owners that go wanting, at least as far as video goes. And to help fill the gap, there is OneScreen. OneScreen connects content owners with advertisers and distributors, helping everyone get more opportunity – and revenue -- from video.
On some level it may sound simple, but video is a VERY different bird. Somebody owns the content, which is very often NOT the person or entity that puts it in front of consumers. Further, the financial relationships between all these companies are governed by a labyrinth of rev share agreements and licensing fees. But wait! There’s more: a player landscape to navigate, and of course advertisers to sign who are anxious to ensure that the content they associate with is brand appropriate. Who has the right to sell to those advertisers? If the site sells an ad, and the content owner sells an ad, are the rev shares the same? And if an ad network sells the ad, how does the split work then?
But OneScreen is not a monetization platform like a Freewheel, rather they are facilitating relationships. OneScreen is a neutral party, sitting on top of the current video ecosystem, including pubs, brands, content owners, and service providers like Freewheel. Because of this position, their ability to transparently connect (and provide reporting for) all the major players impacted by video in a transparent manner is allowing more video content to be created and leveraged in more places. Integrations are at the heart of their platform.
Professional producers of content about specific categories, verticals, and topics, can use OneScreen as their content management and syndication system- to make their content available to a set of sites they approve, and make it available to advertisers interested in those niches.
Advertisers get an easy way to pair their marketing with specialized content, or distribute their own branded entertainment. They work with ad networks for video distribution as well.
Publishers get access to professionally-produced video and a selling mechanism that helps them monetize it more effectively. They also receive all the tools to integrate video across their properties, whether they are widgets, pages, or entire sites.
OneScreen’s vision is far broader than just online video. They are seeking to create an environment in which any organization – from a pub to a gas station – can get video – and revenue -- whenever they want it, and on any device. According to OneScreen, their solution can help an extremely broad range of companies.
One thing for certain, video is going to end up in a lot more places in the next several years. And OneScreen hopes to be a leading player in getting the right video in the right places so publishers, advertisers, content producers, and ultimately audiences, can all win.
Sometimes it seems like video is everywhere. But it isn’t. And the widely touted democratization of video content means lots more creative people can make a killing on ad supported content. It’s not so simple. And sometimes people tout the dramatic increase in the amount of premium video content as an indication that brands can get however much they want, whenever they want it. But that’s not true either.
How ever much we want to make the digital CW an either or proposition, the world of video is definitely not so compartmentalized and “tidy.”
Whatever the reason, there are plenty of brands, sites, and content owners that go wanting, at least as far as video goes. And to help fill the gap, there is OneScreen. OneScreen connects content owners with advertisers and distributors, helping everyone get more opportunity – and revenue -- from video.
On some level it may sound simple, but video is a VERY different bird. Somebody owns the content, which is very often NOT the person or entity that puts it in front of consumers. Further, the financial relationships between all these companies are governed by a labyrinth of rev share agreements and licensing fees. But wait! There’s more: a player landscape to navigate, and of course advertisers to sign who are anxious to ensure that the content they associate with is brand appropriate. Who has the right to sell to those advertisers? If the site sells an ad, and the content owner sells an ad, are the rev shares the same? And if an ad network sells the ad, how does the split work then?
But OneScreen is not a monetization platform like a Freewheel, rather they are facilitating relationships. OneScreen is a neutral party, sitting on top of the current video ecosystem, including pubs, brands, content owners, and service providers like Freewheel. Because of this position, their ability to transparently connect (and provide reporting for) all the major players impacted by video in a transparent manner is allowing more video content to be created and leveraged in more places. Integrations are at the heart of their platform.
Professional producers of content about specific categories, verticals, and topics, can use OneScreen as their content management and syndication system- to make their content available to a set of sites they approve, and make it available to advertisers interested in those niches.
Advertisers get an easy way to pair their marketing with specialized content, or distribute their own branded entertainment. They work with ad networks for video distribution as well.
Publishers get access to professionally-produced video and a selling mechanism that helps them monetize it more effectively. They also receive all the tools to integrate video across their properties, whether they are widgets, pages, or entire sites.
OneScreen’s vision is far broader than just online video. They are seeking to create an environment in which any organization – from a pub to a gas station – can get video – and revenue -- whenever they want it, and on any device. According to OneScreen, their solution can help an extremely broad range of companies.
One thing for certain, video is going to end up in a lot more places in the next several years. And OneScreen hopes to be a leading player in getting the right video in the right places so publishers, advertisers, content producers, and ultimately audiences, can all win.
COD: Butaca.TV – the free online theater seat for movies and video en Espanol
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
Online is a great way to reach and engage Latinos in the US. But not enough brands recognize the opportunity. According to a 2010 study by Pew Internet, English speaking Latinos have similar web usage patterns to Anglos, while foreign born and Spanish dominant Latinos tend to use the web less. But Latinos LEAD Anglos on digital consumption through devices other than a PC. For example, (list lifted from Pew) Hispanics are far more likely than Anglos to do the following through their cellphones:
Text message
Use social networking site
Use the internet
Record and watch videos
Make a charitable donation via text message Use email
Play games
Listen to music
Use instant messaging
Post multimedia content online
In digital video, Latinos that always or sometimes prefer content in Spanish tend to be poorly served. That’s in part because Spanish TV networks haven’t been as active as their Anglo counterparts in making premium long form content available on demand.
A bootstrapped LA-based start-up called Veranda Entertainment has created a digital platform called Butaca to step into this void and offer movies, shows, documentaries, and lifestyle content in Spanish with a free-to-the-viewer advertising supported model. Butaca (the name means theater seat in Spanish) content falls into one of ten genres including Action, Drama, Comedy, Romantic Comedy, Horror/Terror, Children’s, Fantasy, Documentary, and Lifestyle. Videos range from full length movies to shorts.
Anyone who has watched Univision or Telemundo for even a few minutes probably recognizes that Spanish language content comes from a broad range of countries. Butaca’s collection currently offers videos from the US, Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America, and Spain and Portugal
While the offering is currently focused on the PC-based Internet, their vision is to offer a multiscreen platform across computers, smartphones, and connected television, to create the same sort of platform- neutral content options that exist in greater and greater numbers for Anglos. To achieve this, they are currently developing apps for mobile devices and wired TVs. They are working with Sony, Google TV, Samsung, and others to create that frictionless video platform.
One of the persistent misconceptions about the Latino market is that ALL Hispanics want ALL content in Spanish ALL the time. In reality, the American Latino “world” isn’t binary – Spanish only speakers versus English only speakers) but rather people’s preferences and language abilities vary by individual. Butaca content is in Spanish, Portuguese, and English and the site offers the choice of Spanish or English navigation.
They also have partnerships with YouTube and Impremedia’s Hispanic news properties for those who prefer to use those platforms. If you're not familiar with Impremedia, they own some of the largest Spanish language newspapers and associated websites in America, including El Diario La Prensa.
In sum they are delivering about 4 million vid views a month. There are English and Spanish language ads running on the site. Butaca offers a range of ad options, from pre-roll/mid-roll/post-roll to overlays, page wraps and more. The quantity of ads in a given video or flick is quite reasonable, giving advertisers the opportunity to stand out.
The site currently offers several hundred full length films, plus a bunch of other types of content. Most fall into the Classic category. Clearly their vision is to grow that library and lead in the digital video space.
I am happy to get to do my little bit to promote a bootstrapped concern solving a real content problem for America’s fastest growing population!
Online is a great way to reach and engage Latinos in the US. But not enough brands recognize the opportunity. According to a 2010 study by Pew Internet, English speaking Latinos have similar web usage patterns to Anglos, while foreign born and Spanish dominant Latinos tend to use the web less. But Latinos LEAD Anglos on digital consumption through devices other than a PC. For example, (list lifted from Pew) Hispanics are far more likely than Anglos to do the following through their cellphones:
Text message
Use social networking site
Use the internet
Record and watch videos
Make a charitable donation via text message Use email
Play games
Listen to music
Use instant messaging
Post multimedia content online
In digital video, Latinos that always or sometimes prefer content in Spanish tend to be poorly served. That’s in part because Spanish TV networks haven’t been as active as their Anglo counterparts in making premium long form content available on demand.
A bootstrapped LA-based start-up called Veranda Entertainment has created a digital platform called Butaca to step into this void and offer movies, shows, documentaries, and lifestyle content in Spanish with a free-to-the-viewer advertising supported model. Butaca (the name means theater seat in Spanish) content falls into one of ten genres including Action, Drama, Comedy, Romantic Comedy, Horror/Terror, Children’s, Fantasy, Documentary, and Lifestyle. Videos range from full length movies to shorts.
Anyone who has watched Univision or Telemundo for even a few minutes probably recognizes that Spanish language content comes from a broad range of countries. Butaca’s collection currently offers videos from the US, Caribbean, Mexico, Central and South America, and Spain and Portugal
While the offering is currently focused on the PC-based Internet, their vision is to offer a multiscreen platform across computers, smartphones, and connected television, to create the same sort of platform- neutral content options that exist in greater and greater numbers for Anglos. To achieve this, they are currently developing apps for mobile devices and wired TVs. They are working with Sony, Google TV, Samsung, and others to create that frictionless video platform.
One of the persistent misconceptions about the Latino market is that ALL Hispanics want ALL content in Spanish ALL the time. In reality, the American Latino “world” isn’t binary – Spanish only speakers versus English only speakers) but rather people’s preferences and language abilities vary by individual. Butaca content is in Spanish, Portuguese, and English and the site offers the choice of Spanish or English navigation.
They also have partnerships with YouTube and Impremedia’s Hispanic news properties for those who prefer to use those platforms. If you're not familiar with Impremedia, they own some of the largest Spanish language newspapers and associated websites in America, including El Diario La Prensa.
In sum they are delivering about 4 million vid views a month. There are English and Spanish language ads running on the site. Butaca offers a range of ad options, from pre-roll/mid-roll/post-roll to overlays, page wraps and more. The quantity of ads in a given video or flick is quite reasonable, giving advertisers the opportunity to stand out.
The site currently offers several hundred full length films, plus a bunch of other types of content. Most fall into the Classic category. Clearly their vision is to grow that library and lead in the digital video space.
I am happy to get to do my little bit to promote a bootstrapped concern solving a real content problem for America’s fastest growing population!
COD: With Hyperspots, Rachel’s sweater is finally clickable!
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
If you were in the business in the early- to mid-aught decade, you probably saw a demo of vaporware technology that would let the consumer click on a thing in a video (it was always an orangey pink sweater worn by Rachel from Friends) and see how and where you could buy it. There it was, in the online store of Express or Macy’s or wherever.
The technology was always touted as being just a few months away (like rocket jetpacks in the 1950s) but it never seemed to actually materialize. At least no one I know remembers actually seeing it.
But now I have. Hyperspots lets you buy an actress’s sweater, or her hair care products, or her mascara, or or or, simply by clicking the vid. Their player features a vid on the left, and a shopping slate on the right that displays availability info for the things you click. Hyperspots is a company based in Venice, CA.
There’s a working demo on their front page.
Technology like this opens up a world of advertainment that lets consumers volunteer to get more info about products and services available from marketers. Obviously this could work in apparel, but it’s also easy to see how home furnishings, or recipe food ingredients, or cars, or cleaning products could be marketed in this manner.
Their site positions it as an advertising replacement:
No more annoying and disruptive ads interrupting the viewing experience, Hyperspots puts your target audience in control. At anytime, anywhere in the media, a viewer can click to find out more information. By creating a new enriched clickable world, Hyperspots empowers the audience and enables advertising by choice!
Hyperspots technology creates a unique advertising opportunity geared toward engaged viewers willing to know more about the content. This efficient approach leads to high click-through rates, great conversion and very happy end-users.
Personally I don’t see it as an advertising replacement but rather as a supplement to enhance shopping and browsing experiences with entertaining video content that shows products in use versus on mannequins in web site gifs. It’s a virtual runway with instant access to a means to learn and buy.
Such videos might run on your site or on content sites. Each could offer an opportunity to more deeply engage with consumers who WANT to know more about the products and services you are promoting. ANd maybe even are itchin' to buy.
I don’t expect people will want Rachel’s sweater anymore – what with the show having been cancelled so many years ago and fashion having moved on a scosh. But as a new merchandising methodology, it holds the same promise today as it did when the concept first excited us years ago.
If you were in the business in the early- to mid-aught decade, you probably saw a demo of vaporware technology that would let the consumer click on a thing in a video (it was always an orangey pink sweater worn by Rachel from Friends) and see how and where you could buy it. There it was, in the online store of Express or Macy’s or wherever.
The technology was always touted as being just a few months away (like rocket jetpacks in the 1950s) but it never seemed to actually materialize. At least no one I know remembers actually seeing it.
But now I have. Hyperspots lets you buy an actress’s sweater, or her hair care products, or her mascara, or or or, simply by clicking the vid. Their player features a vid on the left, and a shopping slate on the right that displays availability info for the things you click. Hyperspots is a company based in Venice, CA.
There’s a working demo on their front page.
Technology like this opens up a world of advertainment that lets consumers volunteer to get more info about products and services available from marketers. Obviously this could work in apparel, but it’s also easy to see how home furnishings, or recipe food ingredients, or cars, or cleaning products could be marketed in this manner.
Their site positions it as an advertising replacement:
No more annoying and disruptive ads interrupting the viewing experience, Hyperspots puts your target audience in control. At anytime, anywhere in the media, a viewer can click to find out more information. By creating a new enriched clickable world, Hyperspots empowers the audience and enables advertising by choice!
Hyperspots technology creates a unique advertising opportunity geared toward engaged viewers willing to know more about the content. This efficient approach leads to high click-through rates, great conversion and very happy end-users.
Personally I don’t see it as an advertising replacement but rather as a supplement to enhance shopping and browsing experiences with entertaining video content that shows products in use versus on mannequins in web site gifs. It’s a virtual runway with instant access to a means to learn and buy.
Such videos might run on your site or on content sites. Each could offer an opportunity to more deeply engage with consumers who WANT to know more about the products and services you are promoting. ANd maybe even are itchin' to buy.
I don’t expect people will want Rachel’s sweater anymore – what with the show having been cancelled so many years ago and fashion having moved on a scosh. But as a new merchandising methodology, it holds the same promise today as it did when the concept first excited us years ago.
Friday, February 25, 2011
Start-Up Watch COD: Xtranormal and the text to vid phenomenon
If you are alive, I would imagine you have seen an Xtranormal flick over the past year -- the iPhone 4 one was quite popular, as is Digital Ninja. (Both appear below.) But there are thousands of others, and I am certain we will be seeing even more of them over the months ahead.
Xtranormal is a Montreal-based company that lets users makes 3-D animated movies just by typing a script. Whether what you want is 20 seconds long or an hour, it's all possible, and their technology makes it incredibly easy and monstrously addictive. Here are the iPhone 4 and Ninja movies, just to give you a sense of how entertaining DIY cartoons can be.
Warning, both are NSFW:
Those two videos use the same characters and background, but there are actually dozens of other people and places to use for your mini Citizen Kane.
There are essentially two versions of their offering, one web-based and one you download to work on offline. The second version is faster and appears to have more flexibility, not surprisingly. In addition to movie making, Xtranormal also offers a web viewing community, and lets you export your creations in a variety of ways -- low res and higher res. You actually plan your movie through storyboarding, clicking on character icons and writing text as you go. Don't like the way a line sounded? You just change a couple words and re-render. You can also direct simple character movements, and switch camera angles to reflect what the characters are saying and doing.
But how is all this relevant to marketing? Well, I think in about a dozen ways. I'll stick to just a couple here:
First, technology has dramatically reduced the cost of producing commercials. We've moved from a world in which directors and production companies had a monopoly to an era where tens of thousands of pro and semi-pro video makers are scattered across the country, on a level playing field. In 1989, I worked on a TV commercial for laundry soap that cost $1.3 Million. How we spent that on something that did so little for the business -- well, I would say it was a challenge but really it was all rather easy. Of course, that was exceptionally expensive, but for most of my career, major brands paid in excess of $300K for :30s. These days, more and more brands are using crowd sourcing to develop their TV ads. Communities like Poptent and sites like XLNT Ads bring both great value and tremendous ideas to brand challenges every day.
Xtranormal has also been used for making TV ads. I was pleasantly surprised to see GEICO use the platform to make ads they broadcast on national media, using the premise that in the time it took to make the ad, the person could save hundreds. There are a number of these ads out there - I chose the one below to show you a different background and character set:
But as we all know, marketing-centric videos needn't all be broadcast-bound. So many companies would love to produce videos to replace rarely read content on websites. But it used to cost a lot of time and money. Tech companies used to spend a small fortune on making their front page "what we do" videos. Now they can do it for free in about -- two hours.
The final way that I think Xtranormal and its compeittiors are changing the game is that they are shifting the balance in online entertainment from the art direction to the copywriting. Hey, pictures will always be a critical currency online, but with Xtranormal, the emphasis is on writing and aural communication.I think that's great because ads online are, with some notable exceptions, utterly devoid of ideas. And in the ad biz, most of the ideas historically came from the writer. So by entering the environment with such a strong platform, they may shift the balance in online creative to a more idea-centric model. That'd be very good news for our industry.
Finally, this is all animation. But how long can it be before we can put words into the mouths of people? I don't know if that is in Xtranormal's plans, but it is or should be in SOMEONE'S PLANS. It'll probably look rough at first, but like everything else online, it'll get better and better. And THAT will make it possible for us to deliver highly tailored video messages that express brand benefits in the context of a user's personal needs. Pretty powerful stuff for what today looks like a couple of talking bears. Xtranormal was founded in 2006 and has 30 employees according to Crunch Base, so it is a bit bigger than many of the companies I write about. But I think this area is something brands should definitely take note of in a significant way.
Xtranormal is a Montreal-based company that lets users makes 3-D animated movies just by typing a script. Whether what you want is 20 seconds long or an hour, it's all possible, and their technology makes it incredibly easy and monstrously addictive. Here are the iPhone 4 and Ninja movies, just to give you a sense of how entertaining DIY cartoons can be.
Warning, both are NSFW:
digital ninja from moon stuff on Vimeo.
Those two videos use the same characters and background, but there are actually dozens of other people and places to use for your mini Citizen Kane.
There are essentially two versions of their offering, one web-based and one you download to work on offline. The second version is faster and appears to have more flexibility, not surprisingly. In addition to movie making, Xtranormal also offers a web viewing community, and lets you export your creations in a variety of ways -- low res and higher res. You actually plan your movie through storyboarding, clicking on character icons and writing text as you go. Don't like the way a line sounded? You just change a couple words and re-render. You can also direct simple character movements, and switch camera angles to reflect what the characters are saying and doing.
But how is all this relevant to marketing? Well, I think in about a dozen ways. I'll stick to just a couple here:
First, technology has dramatically reduced the cost of producing commercials. We've moved from a world in which directors and production companies had a monopoly to an era where tens of thousands of pro and semi-pro video makers are scattered across the country, on a level playing field. In 1989, I worked on a TV commercial for laundry soap that cost $1.3 Million. How we spent that on something that did so little for the business -- well, I would say it was a challenge but really it was all rather easy. Of course, that was exceptionally expensive, but for most of my career, major brands paid in excess of $300K for :30s. These days, more and more brands are using crowd sourcing to develop their TV ads. Communities like Poptent and sites like XLNT Ads bring both great value and tremendous ideas to brand challenges every day.
Xtranormal has also been used for making TV ads. I was pleasantly surprised to see GEICO use the platform to make ads they broadcast on national media, using the premise that in the time it took to make the ad, the person could save hundreds. There are a number of these ads out there - I chose the one below to show you a different background and character set:
But as we all know, marketing-centric videos needn't all be broadcast-bound. So many companies would love to produce videos to replace rarely read content on websites. But it used to cost a lot of time and money. Tech companies used to spend a small fortune on making their front page "what we do" videos. Now they can do it for free in about -- two hours.
The final way that I think Xtranormal and its compeittiors are changing the game is that they are shifting the balance in online entertainment from the art direction to the copywriting. Hey, pictures will always be a critical currency online, but with Xtranormal, the emphasis is on writing and aural communication.I think that's great because ads online are, with some notable exceptions, utterly devoid of ideas. And in the ad biz, most of the ideas historically came from the writer. So by entering the environment with such a strong platform, they may shift the balance in online creative to a more idea-centric model. That'd be very good news for our industry.
Finally, this is all animation. But how long can it be before we can put words into the mouths of people? I don't know if that is in Xtranormal's plans, but it is or should be in SOMEONE'S PLANS. It'll probably look rough at first, but like everything else online, it'll get better and better. And THAT will make it possible for us to deliver highly tailored video messages that express brand benefits in the context of a user's personal needs. Pretty powerful stuff for what today looks like a couple of talking bears. Xtranormal was founded in 2006 and has 30 employees according to Crunch Base, so it is a bit bigger than many of the companies I write about. But I think this area is something brands should definitely take note of in a significant way.
Start-Up Watch COD: Tynt shines a light on invisible sharing
Thanks to the ad:tech blog for publishing this first.
If you visit a web page, there are any number of companies interested in using that information to predict your future behavior and map your interests. Sometimes the information they collect will be extremely revealing about what you like. Sometimes it won’t.
But content you share is far more likely to be the stuff you care about. According to a fascinating new start-up called Tynt, the most common way content is shared is actually cut and paste. Yes, really. People grab a paragraph and stick it on their blogs. Or post it for Facebook or Tumblr. All that sharing was largely under the radar until Tynt.
Another cut and paste use is for search. You are reading an article on something, and grab a phrase and paste it into the Google Toolbar. Off you go. Meanwhile the site you are on has lost you. Without knowing what you pasted, they have no visibility into what their readers care most about. Or, they might have missed out on telling you about their great content on the specific subject you Googled. Ergo, the site has lost potential revenue.
How many cut and pastes are we talking about? Consider SFGate, the online property of the SF Chronicle. Tynt reports that SFGate’s readership cuts and pastes approximately HALF A MILLION TIMES a month.
Tynt Publisher Tools enable websites to track what is being copied and pasted. The free-for-pubs service is easy to deploy – the site simply adds a small script to its pages. There are four components:
Tynt SEO: Whenever a user cuts text and pastes it, Tynt tracks the content and adds a link to the story to the paste. Here, I’ll simply show you. I am going to cut a sentence out of SFGate, and paste it here.
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Bay Area tech firms Google Inc. and Twitter Inc. have quickly joined forces to launch a "speak-to-tweet" service to give anti-government protesters inside Egypt a way to get around the worsening shutdown of Internet access in that country.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=82144#ixzz1D7YoTNZx
-----
SFGate will benefit from your visits AND get an SEO boost by this link.
Tynt Keywords: Publishers get reports about what words are driving visits and searches/departures from their sites. The reports give a nice graphical view of the topics that people care about most.
Tynt Content: This portion of the service tells you which pages/articles/posts are driving the most cutting and pasting, and what topics were driving the activity.
Tynt Social: It reports on which social channels are driving the most virality for your content. Sites can use this to guide their social strategy.
Here’s their 1-2-3-4 video:
Tynt will obviously have oodles of information about audience interests as a result of all this. Their web site reports that already more than 600,000 sides have integrated Tynt. The monetization opps for all this info are potentially very yummy.
As advertisers and marketers search for better ways to target and tailor messages, Tynt is adding a bold new category to what is available. They have not yet announced how they will monetize the info, but I would be stunned if ad targeting didn’t end up being a part of this. It could also help in dynamic site optimization and audience analytics. To name just three examples.
As Tynt becomes clearer about how they will be merchandising this data, I expect that marketers and advertisers will be anxious to test and deploy efforts using it. It’s really an untapped well of potential value. And there aren’t a lot of those left anymore.
If you visit a web page, there are any number of companies interested in using that information to predict your future behavior and map your interests. Sometimes the information they collect will be extremely revealing about what you like. Sometimes it won’t.
But content you share is far more likely to be the stuff you care about. According to a fascinating new start-up called Tynt, the most common way content is shared is actually cut and paste. Yes, really. People grab a paragraph and stick it on their blogs. Or post it for Facebook or Tumblr. All that sharing was largely under the radar until Tynt.
Another cut and paste use is for search. You are reading an article on something, and grab a phrase and paste it into the Google Toolbar. Off you go. Meanwhile the site you are on has lost you. Without knowing what you pasted, they have no visibility into what their readers care most about. Or, they might have missed out on telling you about their great content on the specific subject you Googled. Ergo, the site has lost potential revenue.
How many cut and pastes are we talking about? Consider SFGate, the online property of the SF Chronicle. Tynt reports that SFGate’s readership cuts and pastes approximately HALF A MILLION TIMES a month.
Tynt Publisher Tools enable websites to track what is being copied and pasted. The free-for-pubs service is easy to deploy – the site simply adds a small script to its pages. There are four components:
Tynt SEO: Whenever a user cuts text and pastes it, Tynt tracks the content and adds a link to the story to the paste. Here, I’ll simply show you. I am going to cut a sentence out of SFGate, and paste it here.
-----
Bay Area tech firms Google Inc. and Twitter Inc. have quickly joined forces to launch a "speak-to-tweet" service to give anti-government protesters inside Egypt a way to get around the worsening shutdown of Internet access in that country.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/techchron/detail?entry_id=82144#ixzz1D7YoTNZx
-----
SFGate will benefit from your visits AND get an SEO boost by this link.
Tynt Keywords: Publishers get reports about what words are driving visits and searches/departures from their sites. The reports give a nice graphical view of the topics that people care about most.
Tynt Content: This portion of the service tells you which pages/articles/posts are driving the most cutting and pasting, and what topics were driving the activity.
Tynt Social: It reports on which social channels are driving the most virality for your content. Sites can use this to guide their social strategy.
Here’s their 1-2-3-4 video:
Tynt will obviously have oodles of information about audience interests as a result of all this. Their web site reports that already more than 600,000 sides have integrated Tynt. The monetization opps for all this info are potentially very yummy.
As advertisers and marketers search for better ways to target and tailor messages, Tynt is adding a bold new category to what is available. They have not yet announced how they will monetize the info, but I would be stunned if ad targeting didn’t end up being a part of this. It could also help in dynamic site optimization and audience analytics. To name just three examples.
As Tynt becomes clearer about how they will be merchandising this data, I expect that marketers and advertisers will be anxious to test and deploy efforts using it. It’s really an untapped well of potential value. And there aren’t a lot of those left anymore.
Start-Up Watch COD: Badgeville brings game dynamics and rewards to YOUR site
Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first.
The whole Four Square badging thing sort of mystified me when it first launched -- why would people jump through hoops for little virtual icons? But I am certainly no stranger to addictive behavior, so the appeal of these little virtual awards sunk in fast.
But why should virtual awards exist only on FourSquare or select social environments like networks and games? According to Badgeville, they shouldn't, and their fascinating company offers a compelling white label badging solution for any web site.
Using Badgeville, which was the Tech Crunch Disrupt Audience Choice Winner in 2010, sites can encourage visitors to perform desirable behaviors in exchange for virtual awards and recognition. Webmasters can offer consumers points, badges, or trophies for specific web tasks.
Example: Want more reviews of products in your store? Give reviewers silver medals, and power reviewers golds.
A longish video of their LeWeb 2010 start up competition pitch appears below:
Site integration comes through nifty little turnkey widgets, or flexible APIs for deeper integration. You can also reward people for sharing your site content on FaceBook and Twitter, and enable users to encourage their friends to join the rewards/awards community in social media. Heck, you can even give them a badge for doing it. Using the built-in real time analytics, you can immediately answer questions like:
Who are your top 100 visitors?
How many of your users have left comments or shared a link to your site?
Where are your site's bottlenecks?
By combining loyalty rewards and game psychology, Badgeville offers an engaging new way to get people to do more on your site, more often. It's an engaging approach to loyalty without requiring lengthy sign up processes or major commitments. Badge lovers will participate while other can simply consume the results of the actions you have encouraged and rewarded on your site.
Definitely one of those ideas that makes me hit myself in the forehead and say, "Why didn't I think of that?" They're based in Palo Alto and Amsterdam. It integrates with your existing database so your current users/members don't need to "join again" to play. It's a SaaS model, with a monthly fees model based upon the level of usage in your community.
Any site
Any behavior
Any award
Flexible, hunh?
The whole Four Square badging thing sort of mystified me when it first launched -- why would people jump through hoops for little virtual icons? But I am certainly no stranger to addictive behavior, so the appeal of these little virtual awards sunk in fast.
But why should virtual awards exist only on FourSquare or select social environments like networks and games? According to Badgeville, they shouldn't, and their fascinating company offers a compelling white label badging solution for any web site.
Using Badgeville, which was the Tech Crunch Disrupt Audience Choice Winner in 2010, sites can encourage visitors to perform desirable behaviors in exchange for virtual awards and recognition. Webmasters can offer consumers points, badges, or trophies for specific web tasks.
Example: Want more reviews of products in your store? Give reviewers silver medals, and power reviewers golds.
A longish video of their LeWeb 2010 start up competition pitch appears below:
Site integration comes through nifty little turnkey widgets, or flexible APIs for deeper integration. You can also reward people for sharing your site content on FaceBook and Twitter, and enable users to encourage their friends to join the rewards/awards community in social media. Heck, you can even give them a badge for doing it. Using the built-in real time analytics, you can immediately answer questions like:
Who are your top 100 visitors?
How many of your users have left comments or shared a link to your site?
Where are your site's bottlenecks?
By combining loyalty rewards and game psychology, Badgeville offers an engaging new way to get people to do more on your site, more often. It's an engaging approach to loyalty without requiring lengthy sign up processes or major commitments. Badge lovers will participate while other can simply consume the results of the actions you have encouraged and rewarded on your site.
Definitely one of those ideas that makes me hit myself in the forehead and say, "Why didn't I think of that?" They're based in Palo Alto and Amsterdam. It integrates with your existing database so your current users/members don't need to "join again" to play. It's a SaaS model, with a monthly fees model based upon the level of usage in your community.
Any site
Any behavior
Any award
Flexible, hunh?
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