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Craig Davis, JWT’s Chief Creative Officer Worldwide has his own blog October 31, 2007

And it’s got some of the best ads from 2007 on it. I recommend you take a look HERE

Here Comes the Do Not Track List October 31, 2007

Privacy Groups Propose Do-Not-Track List

Demands Would Hinder Marketers’ Behavioral-Targeting Practices Online

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By Abbey Klaassen and Ira Teinowitz

Published: October 30, 2007

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Privacy advocates are expected to propose the creation of a do-not-track list, a sort of internet version of the Do Not Call Registry, at a news conference tomorrow.

In addition to the list, the proposal calls for a requirement that advertisers, as part of their online ads, instantaneously disclose details of what they intend to track. According to a media alert announcing the news conference, the groups behind the proposal include the Center for Democracy and Technology, Consumer Action, Consumer Federation of America and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, among others.

The news conference is scheduled to occur the day before the Federal Trade Commission convenes a two-day workshop devoted to ad targeting and internet privacy.

Use cookies to track
Typically, advertisers and online media sellers use web cookies to track and maintain information about online consumers. A cookie might be used to figure out what’s in a user’s shopping cart on a retail website or to record a user’s login for a particular site so that user doesn’t have to re-enter a login name and password every time they revisit the site. Cookies can also be used to track surfing behavior and offer up ads based on a user’s surfing history.

Thanks to such behavioral-targeting technology, a user looking at a specific type of auto on a car-review site, for example, could be targeted with an ad for that particular make and model even when they move onto a general-interest site. Behavioral targeting tends to create more valuable inventory and be more effective, according to many advertisers and publishers familiar with the technology.

However, consumer-privacy advocates charge that collecting such information in order to target ads creates “a privacy imbalance that has deprived Americans of the right to control their personal information.” Privacy advocates say current standards for collecting such data, such as the Network Advertising Initiative, don’t do enough to safeguard consumers against the potential pitfalls of data collection, and that most consumers don’t understand how such data is being used. Some studies show many consumers falsely equate the existence of a site’s privacy policy with a promise that the site will not collect or use consumer data.

Opponents speak up
Opponents of a do-not-track proposal say current privacy standards already require that data not be personally identifiable — it cannot be attached to a phone number, address, name or otherwise unique way to identify an individual. Creating a do-not-track list would, they say, run counter to that.

“It runs into the core issue of, we don’t want to take the anonymity away. This isn’t a consumer-led revolution like do-not-call was. … This is an advocate looking for a cause issue,” said Dave Morgan, chairman of Tacoda, a behavioral-targeting firm owned by AOL.

Online advertising, Mr. Morgan argues, underwrites content. In an ideal scenario, he said more targeted advertising would allow for fewer, more relevant ads on a website, creating a better experience for consumers.

Indeed, consumer surveys tend to indicate consumers find irrelevant advertising to be a source of irritation and most consumers prefer free, ad-supported content to paid, ad-free content.

According to a Forrester report on consumer attitudes toward advertising from November 2006, there are three main sources of advertising irritation to consumers: ads are too numerous, disruptive and irrelevant.

Separately, the Center for Digital Democracy, which was part of the complaint that led to the FTC hearings, is ready to file a revised complaint indicating that some of the information gleaned from tracking contributed to part of the sub-prime mortgage problems.

Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook October 31, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 30 — Google and some of the Web’s leading social networks are teaming up to take on the new kid on the block — Facebook.

On Thursday, an alliance of companies led by Google plans to begin introducing a common set of standards to allow software developers to write programs for Google’s social network, Orkut, as well as others, including LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning.

The strategy is aimed at one-upping Facebook, which last spring opened its service to outside developers. Since then, more than 5,000 small programs have been built to run on the Facebook site, and some have been adopted by millions of the site’s users. Most of those programs tap into connections among Facebook friends and spread themselves through those connections, as well as through a “news feed” that alerts Facebook users about what their friends are doing.

The New York Times learned of the alliance’s plan from people briefed on the matter. Google, which had planned to introduce the alliance at a party on Thursday evening, later confirmed the plan.

“It is going to forestall Facebook’s ability to get everyone writing just for Facebook,” said a person with knowledge of the plans who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak on behalf of the alliance. The group’s platform, which is called OpenSocial, is “compatible across all the companies,” that person said.

“Facebook got the jump by announcing the Facebook platform and getting the traction they got. This is an open alternative to that,” the person also said.

The alliance includes business software makers Salesforce.com and Oracle, who are moving to let third-party programmers write applications that can be accessed by their customers. The start of OpenSocial comes just a week after Google lost to Microsoft in a bid to invest in Facebook and sell advertising on the social network’s pages outside the United States. And it comes just before the expected introduction by Facebook of an advertising system next week, which some analysts believe could compete with Google’s.

Joe Kraus, director of product management at Google, said that the alliance’s conversations preceded Microsoft’s investment in Facebook. “Obviously, we would love for them to be part of it,” Mr. Kraus said of Facebook. Facebook declined to comment.

Facebook’s success with its platform has proved that the combination of social data and news feeds is a powerful mechanism to help developers distribute their software. They are now seen as must-have functions for many Internet companies. Other social networks and Web companies, including MySpace and the instant messaging service Meebo.com, have announced plans to open their sites in similar ways.

For now, however, Facebook has become the preferred platform for software developers.

By teaming with others, Google hopes to create a rival platform that could have broad appeal to developers. A person briefed on the plans said the sites in the alliance had a combined 100 million users, more than double the size of Facebook.

The developers of some of the most popular Facebook applications, including iLike, Slide, Flixter and RockYou, are expected to be present Thursday evening at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., where they will announce that they will tailor their programs to run on the OpenSocial sites.

The effort faces several hurdles. Developers may not see the advantage to writing programs that run across such remarkably different networks as, for example, LinkedIn, which caters to business professionals, and hi5, which is popular in Central America.

For Google, the effort could breathe new life into Orkut, which is popular in Brazil and other countries, but not in the United States. While the move could also help some rival social networks, Google could benefit from their success, in part, by helping to sell advertising on those sites.

Indeed, that strategy would fit into a model that Google has begun talking about recently. Vic Gundotra, who heads Google’s developer programs, said last week that Google would soon begin an aggressive project to create software tools and give them away free in an open-source format.

The goal, he said, is to improve not just Google’s applications, but any software that runs on the Web. That, in turn, would drive more Internet use, and Google would benefit indirectly by selling advertising, he said.

Google has not been able to establish itself as a force in social networking, and it clearly wants to. “One of the things to say, very clearly, is that social networks as a phenomenon are very real,” Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said in a recent interview. “If you are of a certain age, you sort of dismiss this as college kids or teenagers. But it is very real.”

Google said it has advertising relationships with several social networks, including a $900 million partnership to sell ads on MySpace, which the company said is performing well. Google is also making some money on Facebook, through ads that run inside applications that are used on that network.

A person familiar with Google’s efforts said that those applications have been far more effective for advertisers on social networks than users’ personal pages. “It is early, but those ads work very well, whereas the ads in overall social media platforms have shown less performance,” the person said. Mr. Kraus said that over time Google hoped to bring other social elements to Web applications, whether or not they run inside social networks. Analysts expect other Google services, including iGoogle, to be equipped with social features eventually.

I just found a great new blog on media comings and goings October 31, 2007

It’s called Media 3.0 and has my favorite feature called MediaBytes This is done by Blogger Shelly Palmer and will definitely make it on my daily read’s

P&G Results Disappoint Wall Street October 31, 2007

Marketer’s 5% Organic Sales Growth Lags That of Rivals

By Jack Neff

Published: October 30, 2007

BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) — Procter & Gamble Co. may have hit its own expectations and those of many analysts, but it disappointed Wall Street broadly by reporting fiscal first-quarter organic sales growth of 5% today, below that of key competitors who’ve reported so far.

P&G shares were off as much as 5% to $68.23 in early-morning trading, though that was a drop from a strong run-up of more than 14% since early August.

P&G’s beauty business had organic sales growth of 4%, dragging down overall company results. The unit, in fact, lagged Pringles and Folgers — the subject of considerable divestiture speculation — which both outperformed P&G’s high-priority beauty unit on the top line last quarter. (P&G executives wouldn’t confirm or deny the sale speculation.)

Struggles for Olay
Olay, long a major driver of P&G’s skin-care growth, slowed to mid-single digits last quarter, though Chairman-CEO A.G. Lafley promised new product initiatives for the Regenerist and Definity lineups by early next year.

P&G marketing spending, which has been a subject of some scrutiny as the company’s organic sales growth has slowed the past two years and the company redefined it, was up as a percent of sales last quarter, Mr. Lafley said on a conference call with analysts, though he didn’t say by how much. “If we had it to do over again,” he said, “it would have been up a bit more in beauty.”

Beauty’s organic growth last quarter matched that of P&G’s snacks, coffee and pet business, even though the latter’s results were pulled down by the continued impact of the March pet-food recall on Iams and Eukanuba.

P&G Treasurer Jon Moeller indicated the coffee and snacks businesses had organic sales growth of double digits behind product launches that included Dunkin Donuts supermarket coffee in the U.S. and Pringles Rice Infusion in Europe.

Sales up 7.5%
Overall, P&G posted sales up 7.5% to $20.2 billion, with three percentage points of growth coming from currency exchange. Earnings per share rose 16% to 92 cents, meeting analyst expectations even without a 2-cent benefit from tax reductions.

The fabric and home-care business and baby and family care (tissue and towels) groups led organic growth with 7% each.

Despite the relatively soft results in beauty and health care, which also had 4% organic growth, Chief Financial Officer Clayton Daley said P&G had actually picked up market share across all of those businesses, including in the U.S.

This despite P&G’s chief beauty rival, L’Oreal, last week reporting global organic sales rose 7.7% last quarter — roughly twice the rate of P&G beauty. Much smaller beauty rival Alberto-Culver Co. yesterday reported last quarter’s organic sales up more than 10%. And Colgate-Palmolive Co. today reported last quarter’s organic sales rose 6.5%.

P&G executives, however, joined L’Oreal’s in noting some softness in the U.S. market, though Mr. Lafley said private-label shares were at historic lows. And he doesn’t believe the U.S. consumer has lost the desire to trade up to better products.

Nor does he anticipate problems with consumers accepting a slew of P&G price increases, mostly driven by higher commodity costs, including a 5%-12% hike on Olay and Ivory cleansing products and a 5%-8% increase on Pampers diapers — the latter of which has been matched by private-label brands and rival Kimberly-Clark Corp.

Cumulative Media Drive Purchase Intent October 25, 2007

A new guide from Magazine Publishers of America announced by Ellen Oppenheim, Executive Vice President/Chief Marketing Officer, MPA, aggregates new findings from marketing research and consulting companies Marketing Evolution and Dynamic Logic, along
with the latest research from other third-party sources, to offer a comprehensive view of the role of media in influencing consumer purchase decisions and online behavior

The report analyzes cross-media accountability data from 32 studies to determine each medium’s effectiveness through the purchase funnel. The overall findings indicate that:

• Media synergy is important. Three media were better than two, and two media were better than one in generating results
• The combination of TV and magazines provided significantly more lift than did TV plus online
• TV and magazines produced the greatest lifts in ad awareness, with each medium contributing significantly more impact than online
• Magazines were by far the most effective in increasing purchase intent, with a significantly greater point increase compared to the next highest ranking medium in both studies
• Magazines were the most consistent performer in producing positive results in the most campaigns at all stages of the purchase funnel

Presented in MPA’s accountability guide, Marketing Evolution’s analysis of nine client-commissioned studies examines, among other things, how magazine ads contributed to building web traffic. Specifically, the study compares the number of online visits among consumers who saw magazine ads to those of consumers who read different issues of the same magazines without any exposure to the ads.

Key findings include:

• Magazine ads had a major impact on building web traffic, with a lift of more than 40% over the control group, on average
• Magazine ads generated web traffic at each stage of the purchase funnel, especially purchase intent
• Including a URL address in magazine ads significantly increased web visits. When the URL was included, the percent change in visits tripled
• For the Automotive category in particular, magazine ads had significant impact in driving traffic to the auto brands’ websites-with an average increase of seven points, representing an 85% lift, over the control group

“Quantifying the significant impact print magazine ads have on driving on web usage confirms multiple surveys that document the vital role magazines can play in this digital age,” said Ms. Oppenheim. “The study reinforces that marketers looking to boost their website traffic or prompt searches on their products would benefit from leveraging magazines as part of their media plans.”

Additional web-related findings cited in the accountability guide include:

• Offline media perform well in driving web traffic and search, often better than online media
• Each medium influences online behavior differently and plays a distinctive role
• “Qualified” search offers quite different and informative results than “total” search results
• When looking at the role individual media play in driving web results, magazines most consistently drive web traffic and search

Ms. Oppenheim noted, “The latest findings from Dynamic Logic echo the range of conclusions from other independent researchers that magazines play a prominent role in influencing consumers’ buying decisions, especially in the area of purchase intent… “

The Executive summary in the report concludes that the third-party findings, gathered in Accountability II: How Media Drive Results and Impact Online Success, offer insights on purchase funnel dynamics and consumer online behavior that can have profound ramifications for advertisers looking to maximize their return on marketing investment.

And, Bob Liodice, President, Association of National Advertisers, said in September, 2007 “In my mind, the primary objective of ‘marketing accountability’ is to improve the productivity of the entire marketing supply chain to better discern what works and what doesn’t work, so that we can build brand equity, drive short-term business results, enhance long-term performance potential, streamline and increase the productivity of the marketing process, (and) improve the marketing decision-making process across all platforms.”

IAB Report – Status of Game Advertising-Via Game Guru October 24, 2007

Picked this up off a new site for me called Game guru- You might want to check it outs

“The Video Game Interactive Advertising Platform Status Report” provides a detailed overview of the current state of advertising in and around video games. Developed by the IAB Games Committee, the report outlines the myriad opportunities for advertisers to reach and engage consumers in the highly immersive environment of video games.

“The growing number of video game players across multiple demographics coupled with the intrinsically engaging gaming environment offers a unique opportunity for marketers to deliver brand messages to consumers at a moment when they are most involved and attentive,” said Dave Madden, EVP Sales, Marketing and Business Development at WildTangent and Chair of the IAB Games Committee. “This report educates the industry on how to best leverage this fast-growing platform.

About the IAB Games Committee:
The IAB Games Committee works to support and expand the use of marketing in conjunction with video games by agencies and marketers. The committee will recommend solutions, standards and educational tools as needed and will deliver these objectives through industry research, case studies and/or stakeholder education.

Games Committee Member Companies:

MediaPost, People On The Move, October 23, 2007

Google To “Out Open” Facebook On November 5 Via Tech Crunch October 22, 2007

Original Link Here

Michael Arrington

Yesterday a select group of fifteen or so industry luminaries attended a highly confidential meeting at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View to discuss the company’s upcoming plans to address the “Facebook issue.”

The meeting was so secret that all attendees had to sign confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements strictly forbidding them from discussing what was shown to them at the meeting. Notwithstanding that NDA, I’ve now spoken with three of the attendees off record to get an understanding of what Google is planning. Google’s goal – to fight Facebook by being even more open than the Facebook Platform. If Facebook is 98% open, Google wants to be 100%.

The short version: Google will announce a new set of APIs on November 5 that will allow developers to leverage Google’s social graph data. They’ll start with Orkut and iGoogle (Google’s personalized home page), and expand from there to include Gmail, Google Talk and other Google services over time.

On November 5 we’ll likely see third party iGoogle gadgets that leverage Orkut’s social graph information – the most basic implementation of what Google is planning. From there we may see a lot more – such as the ability to pull Orkut data outside of Google and into third party applications via the APIs. And Google is also considering allowing third parties to join the party at the other end of the platform – meaning other social networks (think Bebo, Friendster, Twitter, Digg and thousands of others) to give access to their user data to developers through those same APIs.

And that is a potentially killer strategy. Facebook has a platform to allow third parties to build applications on Facebook itself. But what Google may be planning is significantly more open – allowing third parties to both push and pull data, into and out of Google and non-Google applications.

In the long run, Google seems to be planning to add a social layer on top of the entire suite of Google services, with Orkut as their initial main source of social graph information and, as I said above, possibly adding third party networks to the back end as well. Social networks would have little choice but to participate to get additional distribution and attention.

Google has a number of heavy hitters engaged in the project. Amar Gandhi, who apparently wasn’t at the meeting and whose title is the rather unassuming “Product Manager, Orkut,” was previously at Microsoft where he unsuccessfully tried to integrate social networking features into Vista. Brad Fitzpatrick, the chief architect of Six Apart until he joined Google in August, is leading the charge to make the Google project as open as possible. Patrick Chanezon, Google Evangelist, is herding the cats.

Lots of people noticed Fitzpatrick’s social graph post (linked in paragraph above), connected the dots to his new job at Google, and speculated that Google’s has been working on something really, really big in this area. This is now confirmed and, unless Google changes the launch date, we’ll be seeing the beginning of it on November 5.

In driving sales, magazines rank No. 1 October 18, 2007

In driving sales,
magazines rank No. 1

Medium enhances TV and internet campaigns

By Heidi Dawley
Oct 18, 2007

Finally, a positive few words about beleaguered magazines, after years in which the medium has been losing readers and advertisers to the internet and elsewhere.

When it comes to advertising effectiveness, a new study finds, magazine advertising remains especially effective in enhancing consumers’ impressions of the product and their intent to purchase that product.

The study found that adding magazines to a TV and internet advertising campaign significantly boosts the success of the campaign, and in some key areas the contribution of magazines outweighed that of TV.

The study, by Dynamic Logic, a New York research company, analyzed 32 cross-media campaigns from 10 different types of companies, including consumer goods, automotive, electronics, apparel and financial services. Most were U.S. campaigns but some were global as well.

The researchers first isolated the impact of TV advertising. They then looked at what impact adding the internet had. Last they looked at what magazines contributed to the mix.

To do this, the study compared results from people who had seen only the TV ads with those who had seen TV and internet, and then those who had seen ads in all three media.

Dynamic Logic undertook this study to better understand how different media work when used together, says Bill Havlena, vice president, research analytics for Dynamic Logic.

With advertisers and marketers increasingly using multiple media together in campaigns, understanding how the media work together when planning becomes more and more critical, says Havlena.

In this study, the researchers found that the three different media worked best when used together. Both online advertising and magazines added significantly to the impact of the advertising when used along with TV.

Further, each media contributed in a different way.

“The different media are working most strongly at different points in the purchase process,” says Havlena. “The results confirm the strengths of all the media working together in a way that we hadn’t seen before.”

Looking at the data shows that TV worked strongly in generating brand and advertising awareness. In those categories the other two media built strongly on the initial impact of TV.

For instance, in terms of brand awareness, TV added 7.6 percentage points to the original percentage of people who were aware of the brand. The internet added another 3.7 points to the level of awareness. Finally magazines added another 5.7 percentage points (see chart, below).

In terms of advertising awareness, TV provided a bump of 9.8 percentage points. The internet, which performed strongest in the same categories as TV, added another 4.4 points.

Surprisingly, magazines also performed strongly in building advertising awareness, adding 8.3 points.

“We would not necessarily have expected that. It is clear that TV did a strong job in building awareness, but TV is thought of as an awareness-building medium, magazines, less so,” says Havlena.

But it was in the final two categories of the purchase funnel that magazines really excelled when used in combination with TV and internet.

When it came to brand favorability and purchase intent, magazines added far more than TV and internet combined. For instance, in the key area of purchase intent, TV added 4.6 percentage points; the internet added 1.0 points; and magazines added 7.0 percentage points.

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