Face Painters Rejoice: Submit Your Fanatical Vids to Coke Zero Contest

From MediaPost and by Karlene Lukovitz:

As a core part of its NCAA "Taste the Madness" campaign, Coke Zero has launched a video promotion giving March Madness fans a chance to appear in a special "vignette" aired just prior to tip-off during the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball National Championship on April 6.


Coke Zero is encouraging fans to upload "their most animated and fanatical videos and photos" supporting their favorite NCAA college basketball team.

Fans can upload their videos and photos between now and the NCAA Men's Final Four on the Coke Zero "March Madbase" (www.tastethemadness.com), a database of NCAA basketball fan rituals. The winners, picked by brand-chosen judges, will be hosted on ncaa.com, and will be incorporated into the 30-second vignette during the championship game.

White Paper Wednesdays: Marketing With Online Video

Like it says on the tin...

Marketing with Online Video: Challenges & Opportunities, Raghav Gupta, VP of International Partnerships, Brightcove

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: iab conference)

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Cool Iris - A Leap Forward in Web-TV Convergence

The convergence of web and TV is a topic frequently discussed, with both devices making significant steps in the other's direction. Cooliris is a fascinating new service that takes web experience to another astral plane, transforming a menu of video content into a 3-D theater of TVs that are fun to access and when click provides a remarkable full screen viewing experience.I am not doing justice to the service, so here are some screens from their slide show demo:









Heck, so seeing is believing, so I give you two UGC videos of the Cooliris service and its broad feature set:





As with most such services, there are even ways to customize the appearance of your video wall, changing colors, angles, and the like.

In order to use the Cooliris service, you need to be visiting a Cooliris enabled site. But that's fast becoming a pretty big list from major soc nets to leading video sites including YouTube and Hulu.

Advertisers can get deeply in the mix. They offer three forms of sponsorship:

COLUMN ADVERTISING
Cooliris inserts advertising in columns (three ads per column) next to other media content in the 3D Wall. These ads are format agnostic and can have a zoomed in state that is larger than the thumbnail view. When a user selects content, a 300x250 px image or video ad will appear. A double click on the selected item will expand to a full-screen presentation of the ad.

INLINE ADVERTISING
Cooliris will insert advertising next to other media content in the 3D wall. These ads are format agnostic and can have a zoomed in state that is larger than the thumbnail view. When a user selects content, a 300x250 px image or video ad will appear. A double click on the selected item will expand to a full-screen presentation of the ad.

SPONSORSHIP OF DISCOVER CHANNEL
Cooliris will create a new, time-limited, sponsored channel in Discover. Upon launch of Discover, the user will see a branded wall with a customizable background, logo, and content provided by the advertiser. Content is fully customizable and can link to an external website, including an e-commerce destination.

It appears to be all user activated, which must do wonders for the appeal of the platform. It'd be interesting to see some data on how consumers interact with this stuff. For advertisers the service also offers reporting that gives you the key viewership measures.

It's cool, especially if you are a videophile. And the ad options could provide a whole new set of contact points for markeitng messages to reach consumers.

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Digital Marketing Factoid of the Day: Global Online Video Viewers

How bout these numbas!

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Flash-Based Online Joost: How’s It Going?

Joost was once the media darling of the digital industry, especially on the ad side. But the arrival of Hulu changed that. The reason? Hulu required no download, whereas Joost had a fairly heavy download requirement. Part of the reason for that was the ability to offer a higher quality viewing experience, but there were other factors as well.

Many consumers are reticent to download things to their PCs, with the result that the interested universe in Joost IN THAT FORM turned out to be much smaller than the number of people willing to visit and watch things at Hulu.

Joost’s download did bring with it some cool features like real time chat as you watched a vid, and the ability to download programs and view them later, when not online. But overall, the market spoke, and spoke Hulu.

In mid September Joost launched a browser based offering requiring no download, and since that time, I have often wondered how it was doing. Well, here’s the Quantcast screen:



Clearly Joost remains committed to their social media layers – which may offer a compelling reason for people to choose one venue over another. Whoever the eventual winner, it's nice to see Joost getting some big boosts in daily visits as a result of moving away from the download model.

I also like it that all the video sites are not cookie cutter copies of one another.

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Vid Still Growing Like Mad

Despite the weaker than expected economy, online video appears to be poised for continued growth. Check out these massive projections from eMarketer:



See people? Not all the news should make you frown.

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9 Viral Vids to Give You a Break From Wall Street and Layoffs and...

...Bill Ayers, and taxing healthcare benefits. We all need a breather from the stresses of the economy and politics. Enjoy. And if someone catches you watching, tell them it's vital viral marketing research! Without further ado:



9. Worst Best Man



I hope they did the pictures before the ceremony.







8. Little Gordon (Ramsay)



Actually a series of vids produced for Caterer.com, a UK-based job site for hospitality careers. It's a bit rough language wise, though bleeped.







7. Ninja Cat



I don't understand why people like this one so much, but them I AM a dog person.







6. The WebSite is Down



It's the classic fight: Sales versus IT. Warning: Rough language and pics.






5. Evil Baby



Gives new meaning to the evil eye.







4. Mark Wahlberg Talks to the Animals



Marky shows he's a good sport.







3. Take on Me - Literally



So sue me, I was young and carefree when the original version of this came out. This send up of it is more than a chuckle.







2. Sony - Dominoes



A gorgeous new TV ad people WANT to see!







1. Apple Versus MSFT: Money Pile



Computer wars score: Cupertino 1, Redmond 0.







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The Importance of Buying Quality in Video

This piece ran in iMedia a couple weeks ago. I thought I'd post it here in case you missed it.

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There used to be two kinds of traditional agencies. One kind believed that placements in highly rated shows worked better on a dollar-for-dollar basis than ads placed in low-rated shows. The second group believed that "a GRP is a GRP" and, therefore, one should buy the cheapest GRPs in a daypart.

The corollary was that half the world paid premium CPMs for top 10 shows and the other half didn't. I confess to have always been a proponent of the second view. In my opinion, a person watching "Jake and the Fat Man" reruns can be just as passionate about his TV choice as a viewer of a hot show.

But online video is a different world entirely. In my view, there are four tiers of video content quality:

* Broadcast quality and content
* Professionally produced and screened content
* Pro-am and positive UGC
* Rants and negative UGC

Because the range of online video content is so large in terms of quality, subject matter and production values, brands need to take extra care that the environments and content they support meet their minimum standards of acceptability.

Nearly everyone agrees on that. But this view takes a purely negative perspective on the issue. It's essentially saying, "We don't want to be anywhere awful." Fine for as far as it goes, but should we view video content beyond of a binary prism of acceptable and unacceptable? Can great online content actually increase the impact of our advertising and, in and of itself, drive improved brand perceptions simply by dint of our being in it?

Sadly, there is precious little hard research on the subject. My online searches for studies uncovered exactly none.

In the absence of research, we all need to make decisions on where to run ads and how much to pay for one type of content over another. As a starting point on how to do this correctly, here are five reasons why paying a modest premium for high-quality video content may well be worth it as a means to deliver valuable brand benefits through your online ad program.

1. Content quality is something brands can still control. In a world where "the consumer is in charge," brands need all the edge they can get to create appealing images. Although I suspect the impact of content quality on brand perceptions is only moderate, moderate is far better than nothing.

2. The industry is getting better on contextual targeting in premium video content. Context can certainly deliver positive benefits in terms of pre-screening eyeballs and ensuring greater attention to relevant messages. It is now getting easier to buy by context, whether overtly or through site selection. That's on high-end content. But as for the cheap stuff? Nobody knows what's in most of it. Automatic brand protection screening systems can usually keep us out of prurient vids, but to my knowledge they can't contextually target yet.

3. Premium content is largely positive. I am a huge believer that the tonality of content affects brand impressions. When people feel good, they'll feel better about the brands they find in what made them feel good. And premium, professionally produced content is much more likely to be upbeat and positive than lower-tier content, which is loaded with questionable UGC and rants.

4. Premium content is often "destination" media, low quality content is often a "time killer." Although I have no empirical evidence with which to prove this theory, I am convinced that much low-quality content is low involvement -- something to view when there is nothing else to do. There are, of course, exceptions... highly viral content like the vids of Britney defender Chris Crocker certainly attract engaged eyeballs. But for the most part, I suspect that such engagement is unusual.

5. Viewers understand the need for ads on premium content, but may be less accepting on lower-quality content. Most research shows that consumers are willing to accept pre-roll and other forms of advertising when paired with high-quality video content. Something has to pay for these productions; consumers understand that. But for lower-tier vids, which are frequently short or have low production values, the value proposition may be less apparent to consumers. I imagine that, to viewers, YouTube running the skateboarding dog clip seems essentially free to all parties -- that no ad is necessary to show this content. Few would question pre-roll on a "Desperate Housewives" episode; many might on a video of a skateboarding dog.

On the issue of quality, UGC is a bit of a googly at the moment. Certainly there is great, contextually targeted UGC that could be quite brand enhancing. I'm thinking, for example, of some of the "how to get this look" videos on YouTube, or the UGC Burger King raps. Why wouldn't Cover Girl and the King want to be right there in places like that?

But advertisers remain less willing to support UGC -- not because of what it is, but rather because of what it might be. Certainly the automated porn detector technologies out there help make UGC environments safer, as will video and auto-recognition technologies. So that's good news for the future.

The other challenge, of course, is that there is a lot more lower-tier inventory out there than premium stuff. So brands need to be prudent about the sorts of premiums they are willing to pay to be associated with the best content.

The Nine Things That Made Me Think Twice this Week

iMedia has given me the opportunity to blog on their site and I am more than a little grateful for that. The blog is here. I'm going to do a repost of my Wednesday entries here.

9. Google Growth So Slow It May Begin Advertising

From Henry Blodget at Silicon Alley Insider: Google “has recently held discussions with several Madison Avenue agencies, including Wieden + Kennedy and the boutique firm Taxi New York, about new efforts to promote some products, according to people familiar with the matter.In August, Google launched an advertising effort in Japan that included outdoor and online ads created by Wieden + Kennedy, which is best known for its Nike "Just do it" campaign...” MORE

Yes, the word is that the company that has built one of the largest brands on earth without advertising itself may be pondering a significant ad effort. I wonder…is it slowing growth or the declining luster of the brand that promised to “do no evil.”

8. Lots of Bloggers Are ACTUALLY Making Money

Michael Estrin reports “Half of all bloggers run ads, and of that group, 70 percent use self-service contextual ad platforms such as Google's AdSense, according to Technorati's "State of the Blogosphere" report. The report, which Technorati has compiled since 2004, also found that 23 percent of bloggers use three or more ad platform MORE

We’ve all seen blog ads for years, but frankly I always thought that people were tilting at windmills with all those ads. But the recent Technorati report shows that both lots of bloggers are making SOME money, and a lot more people than you think are making a living at it. Democratizing content has led to democratized profit!

7. Microsoft’s Ads Go Viral, And Prove That Any Publicity Is Good Publicity

Mario Sgambelluri reports, “Microsoft’s bizarre Gates/Seinfeld ads racked up 3.2 million online views during the 10 days following their launch, while the latest Mac “I’m a PC” ads netted less than half that, reports online video measurement company Visible Measures.” MORE

I hated this new MSFT campaign and blogged about it in a rather negative way. But maybe the joke's on me. When you’re trying to restage a brand in a world where talk is more important than GRPs, maybe producing an ad campaign explicitly designed to drive digital discussion is the best way to dig a brand image out of a hole. One thing for sure, a LOT of people are talking about Redmond!

6. Online Video Penetration Doubled in 12 Months

Michael Estrin reported that There are twice as many Americans watching video on their computers than there were this time last year, according to a recent study from ABI Research, which surveyed nearly 1,000 users. In 2007, ABI found that 32 percent of users were watching video online, but that figure has spiked to 63 percent of those surveyed in 2008. MORE

I would imagine that no one is surprised at massive growth in video. But penetration doubling in a year? Fantastic! I guess I should have known something was up when my Mom sent me a link to an embedded video a couple of weeks ago. If you’re a brand that uses TV and isn’t using online video, what ON EARTH are you waiting for?

5. Doritos Stakes $1 Million On the Power of Consumers to Out Do DDB

Michael Estrin writes “The marketing team at Anheuser-Busch may not know it, but there's a $1 million bounty on their heads courtesy of PepsiCo's Doritos brand. Doritos, which has garnered a fair amount of attention with its user generated Super Bowl ads, is taking the format to a new level this year, promising $1 million dollars to the winner if the ad ranks No. 1 on the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter. Anheuser-Busch has placed No. 1 for the past 10 years running. MORE

Bud has been on top of the Super Bowl ad stakes for years upon years. And Doritos is sick of it. So their new contest asks Doritos eaters to come up with an ad that can beat some of the greatest creative minds in the biz. Do I hear a tremble in Mad Ave’s voice? I’m betting the public can do it!

4. The Politics, They Have a Changed

I got reminded of this video, which shows us all how much the digital revolution has changed the world, including politics. Now, if you're in your early 20s this may seem like politics as usual to you. But lemme tell you, we’re a long way from the campaigns of yesteryear!



3. Time to Tighten The Belts?

Steve McClellan of AdWeek reports: “But privately, some industry executives now believe this year's ad spend might actually end up in negative territory, and might not improve at all in 2009. They point to figures just released by Nielsen Monitor-Plus that show a first-half U.S. ad spend decline of 1.4 percent, compared with the same period in 2007, to $67.6 billion, with significant drops in spending in major ad categories including automotive (down 8 percent to $5.3 billion), pharmaceutical (down 5 percent to $2.6 billion) and movie studios (down 5 percent to $1.7 billion).” MORE

No surprise that the recession will be affecting the biz, but two years of declines is a pretty sobering prediction. Those on the digital side should find it less painful, but it appears that times are going to get kind of tough.

2. Twitter Continues To Grow By Leaps And Bounds

Michael Estrin reports: “Apparently micro-blogging your way through American politics has an enormous appeal. Twitter reported a 23 percent jump in signups from the previous week, and the company cited last week's presidential debates as the primary source for the increase.” MORE

I never really liked Twitter, well, that’s not true. I hated it. I keep thinking the whole thing will collapse like a house of cards when people wake up to the maddening annoyance of 140 characters. But apparently I am the one who doesn’t get it. More than 20% growth in a week? On an already large base? Good Lord. Resolved, I will hold my nose and try it again.

1. Widgets Most Assuredly NOT Dead

Michael Estrin reports “Coming soon to a Facebook page within your network: video content from your favorite big media companies. At least, that's the plan under the terms of a new deal that Slide has inked with CBS Interactive, Comcast's E! Entertainment channel and Time Warner's Warner Brothers, as well as News Corp. and NBC Universal's jointly owned video site Hulu, among other companies. MORE

Last fall the CW was that widgets were hotter than lava. Last spring they were virtually DOA. But the pendulum seems to have swung into the black again, with companies that actually have reasons to have widgets and content in widgets offering widgets. Imagine that.

Well, that’s The Nine this week. Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to write.