Study: Mobile Ads Boost Brand Awareness 19% April 29, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a comment
ADOTAS – Interactive ad-supported mobile gaming company Greystripe just released research conducted by Dynamic Logic measuring the effectiveness of its mobile advertising campaign for “The Golden Compass.”
Survey respondents were separated into “control” and “exposed” groups based on who saw the ads (786 mobile Web users between the ages of 18 and 55). The results showed a significant difference in awareness and interest in the movie among the groups.
Among the findings:
• Significant increases in awareness of and interest in film — a +19.3 percentage-point increase in awareness of the film’s title
• Increased interest — exposure resulted in a +9.5 percentage-point increase in interest in seeing the film among overall respondents
• Intent to see the movie in theaters increased by +14.5 percentage points among respondents ages 18-24
• Among the overall sample, 35% use their mobile phones for “finding theater and movie times” and 29% “watch movie trailers.”
Greystripe said that the mobile campaign delivered better results than those typically seen for cinema release campaigns online.
“These results demonstrate that Greystripe’s mobile-savvy audience is highly engaged by full screen ads delivered through media on their mobile phones. The mobile phone is an incredibly personal and social digital platform enabling brands to interact deeply with their audience,” Greystripe’s director of advertising sales, Jenny Burrington, said in a release.
Greystripe delivers full-screen ads that are wrapped around mobile games and applications; the ads are served before and after usage and are free on the company’s online / mobile portal GameJump.com and through its AdWRAP Catalog program.
Mobile Display Ads Have Branding Impact – Increase Awareness, Interest April 29, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentAwareness of and interest in “The Golden Compass” among those exposed to full-screen mobile ads for the film increased significantly, according to the results of a mobile advertising campaign by Greystripe and New Line Cinema.
Greystripe commissioned Dynamic Logic to conduct research to measure the success of the ad campaign in raising awareness, interest and intent-to-see the movie. Survey respondents were separated into “control” and “exposed” groups based on who saw the mobile ads.
Mobile web users exposed to “The Golden Compass” ads on the Greystripe network exhibited the following, according to the study:
- Significant increases in awareness of and interest in film – a 19.3 percentage-point increase in awareness of the film’s title.
- Increased interest – exposure resulted in a 9.5 percentage-point increase in interest in seeing the film among respondents overall.
- Intent to see the movie in theaters increased by 14.5 percentage points among respondents age 18-24.
Additional findings:
- Respondents who identified themselves as “frequent” movie-goers use the mobile internet more often than those identified as “non-frequent” movie-goers (79% vs. 58%).
- Among all respondents, 35% use their mobile phones for “finding theater and movie times” and 29% “watch movie trailers.”
- Mobile ads were most effective among those described as “avid” movie-goers (those who have seen three or more movies in the theater in the past two months).
About the case study: The campaign ran on Greystripe’s mobile ad network, which delivers full-screen advertisements that are wrapped around mobile games and applications. The mobile web survey was fielded November 8 to December 6, 2007, among 786 mobile Web users age 18-55.
People on the move April 29, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a comment| Tuesday, Apr 29, 2008 |
Rodale promoted CHRIS LAMBIASE to vice president and group publisher for Running and Cycling. He joined Rodale in 2004 as vice president and publishing director of Bicycling. Lambiase replaces ANDREW HERSAM, vice president and publishing director of the Runner’s World Media Group. |
Beyond Interaction hired STACEY DEZIEL as director of client services. Prior to joining MediaCom, Deziel was executive vice president, media director for FCBi, the digital division of DraftFCB. |
MATT BARASH joined Traffic Marketplace as director of publisher development. Most recently, he was business development manager at 24/7 Real Media. |
IAN BEAVIS joined Carat as executive vice president, executive client director. Most recently, Beavis was vice president of marketing, public relations & product planning for Kia Motors America, where he was responsible for all aspects of marketing operations including advertising, research, pricing, product planning and public relations. |
HORIZON MEDIA promoted JENNA BEATTY and JOHN POOR to interactive senior media planners. |
OMD North America hired ALAN COHEN as CEO of OMD USA. Cohen previously served as president of worldwide innovation and president of Initiative West. |
MONICA KARO was promoted to president of integrated accounts for OMD USA, up from managing director of OMD West. |
LinkedIn hired DREW CALIN as a southwest territory account executive. |
Marcus Thomas hired MIKE STRAUSS as vice president, interactive. Previously, Strauss was group account director at Whitmanhart Interactive. |
TAYLOR COOK joined Phillips Design Group as account director. |
Toth Brand Imaging promoted DEREK MCCARTY to account executive. |
R/GA hired JIM MOFFATT as managing director of its London office. Moffatt joins the agency from AKQA London where he served as director of integration. |
BrightRoll hired LEWIS ROTHKOPF as vice president of network development; MIKE BELLER as a sales director; and BRAD PIGGOT as sales director. |
ERIC HARRIS joined BuzzFeed as general manager. Harris comes to BuzzFeed after previously serving as the vice president of product management at Operative Media. |
[x+1] appointed PAUL DAVIS as vice president, analytics. |
| Red Tettemer named MICHAEL BARKER as executive creative director. |
MICHELLE MUKHERJEE joined Godfrey Q and Partners as associate media director overseeing the Freescale Semiconductor and Insight brands. She joins the company from Universal McCann where she served as associate media director on the Microsoft server and tools business. |
KEVIN DAVIS joined Ripple TV Networks as senior account executive, focusing on advertising sales to West Coast agencies and clients. Most recently, Davis worked at Premier Retail Networks. |
The VIA Group hired ANDREA VECCHIO as an account supervisor responsible for the LoJack account. KENDRA JARRATT was named as an account supervisor, responsible for working on Maidenform. |
Nielsen Business Media promoted ALISON FAHEY from editor of Adweek, to publisher/editorial director. MIKE CHAPMAN succeeds Fahey as editor. |
Zig promoted MARTIN BEAUVAIS to executive creative director; AARON STARKMAN and STEPHEN LEPS to creative directors; and ANDREW BRADLEY and MICHAEL CLOWATER to associate creative directors. |
Media Metrics: Here Comes the Bride April 29, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentOnline advertising, they say, is a marriage of art and science. But if this is true, it certainly was a wedding of the shotgun variety. Since the days of John Wanamaker, corporations lived with the hope that at least 50 percent of their advertising was not wasted. Flash forward to 2000 and the waste ratio of online advertising looked much worse, with 98 percent of the target audience refraining from clicking on campaign ads.
Clients did the math and concluded that online consumers were advertising-blind, which pushed the arty agency folks to embrace hard science as a means to prove that online advertising does, in fact, move the needle. As with any branch of science, the most powerful tool to determine the truth is the experiment. This usually brings to mind white-coated scientists in a lab mixing ominously glowing substances at their own risk. While white coats are optional in advertising research, advertisers have practiced controlled lab experiments for several decades. For example, they randomly separated subjects into test and control groups, showed them different versions of an ad and observed their reactions. This is how we learned that subliminal advertising does not work.
Advertisers used to shy away from two other types of experiments: 1) field experiments that create controlled environments in the real world; and 2) quasi-experiments (also known as natural experiments), which require no intervention but rely on elaborate observations. The former were considered too difficult to perform, the latter often inapplicable, due to a lack of good data.
The invention of digital ad serving made it possible to turn any online campaign into a large-scale field experiment. While it was nearly impossible, in the traditional advertising world, to ensure that a control segment of the target audience wouldn’t come into contact with the actual ads, digital advertising researchers can use cookies to isolate two otherwise identical but mutually exclusive groups of online users: those who have seen the ads and those who have not.
Millward Brown pioneered the test-versus-control-group approach in 1997 with its Brand Impact product. However, it was Dynamic Logic’s AdIndex, launched in 2000, that truly made online field experiments a must-have tool. Dynamic Logic and its competitor, InsightExpress, created mutually exclusive test and control segments of users, with the latter being served PSAs in place of actual ads. They simultaneously recruited test and control groups from the have-seen-the-ad and have-not-seen-the-ad segments via an intercept survey that let them measure these consumers’ brand awareness, brand favorability and purchase intent – and how it differed among the two groups.
This method became the gold standard (today, Dynamic Logic’s database captures results from 3,674 controlled experiments from a combined sample of more than 5.5 million), and later extended to include offline natural media exposure measurements.
It is possible to forego intercept surveys and still run field experiments if the campaign’s behavioral data includes a concrete advertising-effectiveness indicator. Examples of such indicators could include a visit to the advertiser’s site, signing up for a newsletter, or a purchase. In this case, you can set up a test with an ad-serving tool like DoubleClick’s dart, which provides the campaign segmentation necessary to isolate audiences from test and control placements, as well as compare conversion rates between the test- and control-user segments.
The biggest hurdle to conducting field experiments is that it takes a substantial portion of your media budget to create the control-audience segment by replacing a brand’s ads with control ads. The more you hope to learn from the experiment, the more control ads you need to serve – and the more costly the research. Every time you intend to drill deeper into a test group to evaluate the effect of a particular site category, day-part, audience segment, etc., you need to grow the control-group sample at a corresponding level to yield a proper comparison.
Since 2002, Internet advertising expenditures have grown at double-digit rates for all industries except for consumer-packaged goods. Unlike other industries, CPG marketers couldn’t usually tie campaign performance to consumer behavior, since virtually all CPG sales occur offline. Then Yahoo came up with an original design: combine data from browsing logs with Nielsen Homescan data to see how Homescan panelists’ exposure to online ads eventually translates into their purchases at grocery stores.
An attractive side benefit of this offering: a free control group. Yahoo extracts a look-alike control sample from Homescan panelists who haven’t been exposed to the online campaign and compares their purchasing behavior to those of the panelists who’ve seen the online ads.
This method has led to improved targeting and spending decisions and it’s widely used today. Last year alone, Yahoo ran 63 Consumer Direct studies that resulted in CPG advertisers steadily increasing their use of online and consumer direct advertising. AOL and msn followed, and now also use the natural control approach when evaluating CPG campaign effectiveness.
What’s the must-have prerequisite for identifying a valid natural control group? Comprehensive knowledge of the audience in question: its ad exposure, demographics and past online behavior. It can come from a user dataset like the subscriber databases of major portals or, better yet, a metered online panel.
For example, comScore offers quasi-experimental research that explores the advantages of maintaining a large audience-measurement panel. It passively observes who was exposed to a brand’s advertising running across any publisher’s Web site and uses a nearest-neighbor algorithm that handpicks non-exposed panelists who most closely match the exposed based on multiple dimensions of online activity not related to the ad contact. This approach is advertising’s best practice of non-invasive natural experiment techniques, commonly used in sciences such as epidemiology or astrophysics, where it is unethical or simply impossible to manipulate the variables.
Most recently, comScore launched Brand Metrix, which employs the natural control group to measure online advertising’s attitudinal and branding impact. It also compares the exposed and matched controls on key behavioral metrics, such as visits to the advertised Web site and purchases, to establish the lift due to the ads. ComScore intends for Brand Metrix to compete head-to-head with Dynamic Logic’s and InsightExpress’s field-testing products.
The good news is that regardless of the shotgun start, today online advertising’s marriage of art and science has matured into a solid union and one in which any campaign is, potentially, a revealing experiment in progress. Contributing to its long-term success is the fact that sometimes you don’t even need to change any variables (and come up with the funding to do so) to establish effectiveness. You just need to look at what is already out there in a different way.
Yaakov Kimelfeld, Ph.D., is vice president of digital research and analytics director at MediaVest USA.
Making Our Numbers ( Mobile Insider) April 22, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentI am enough of an old Web media fart to recall the days when another digital ad platform was struggling for the respect of advertisers. Back in 1999 and 2000 the hype surrounding the Internet was far ahead of the actual ad spend, even as more eyeballs migrated here. For a while, I recall, 13% was some kind of magic number frustrated digital publishers bandied about. One of the metrics firms found that 13% of media mindshare was going to the Internet, and audacious publishers bemoaned the big disconnect between mind-share and spend-share. Only about 3% of media budgets went digital at the time.
Although the big disconnect between mind-share and spend remain online, the numbers have improved overall. Many forces contributed to the torrent of online ad money (not the least of which was search), but I still believe that the interactive content and marketing industries themselves helped move the needle with a deliberate marshalling of hard and consistent research about online ad effectiveness. Groups like the Online Publishing Association commissioned research that showed the power of content brand in ad effectiveness. The IAB and others carted out case study after case study and cross-media campaign analyses. Publishers themselves started throwing in Dynamic Logic post-campaign branding studies as value-adds — to the point where some of us in the press were memorizing the “intent to buy” lifts registered by high profile campaigns. Ultimately, the online ad industry was learning the language of agencies and media buyers and getting beyond its own hype.
We are at a similar point in mobile now, because we are not ready yet to answer some basic questions, like what role mobile plays in a larger campaign or an overall media strategy for a brand. This is a question I find myself asking at the many panels and conferences I moderate. From a brand or campaign manager’s perspective, what is mobile supposed to do? What role does it play? And how does it compare to the other rows in the campaign’s spreadsheet?
We may be getting some answers to this most basic question from the “Three Screen Trial” that ioglobal is conducting and the Mobile Marketing Association is supporting with staff and resources. In the last few months, I have been talking with ioglobal’s North American general manager, Bob DeSena, about this project, which sounds to me like a fascinating lab for both content providers and advertisers. It is designed to test comparatively media and ad effectiveness across mobile, Web and TV. For the first time we will see how consistent media and messaging work on a similar audience across the key platforms. According to DeSena, the major publishers in this test finally will get preliminary answers to a fundamental question: “What is the appropriate format and use of mobile to promote their properties, to distribute their properties and to do it in a way to maximize multiple platforms.” On the ad side, this test is aimed squarely at agencies and brand managers who have to start thinking of mobile as more than a test — as a part of a larger strategy and buying plan.
The Three Screen Trial promises to measure who is seeing the mobile impression — and how many times. What is the overlap with other media? And then, most important, what is the impact of the campaign channel by channel? The test is ready to roll, and the MMA and ioglobal are reopening the project to more agency involvement and test campaigns. For the auto category, financial and packaged goods segments, all of which have evolved programs on all three platforms, this would seem to be a perfect opportunity to establish the baseline metrics each of these industries needs to invest seriously in mobile.
These are the hard and big questions that, so far as I can tell, mobile has not even begun to ask — let alone answer. Arguably, some of them haven’t even been asked pointedly enough about online advertising’s relationship to the rest of the marketing mix. To its credit, the MMA decided to get behind this study, and I think it would be good for the industry if it served as the kind of landmark research that helped push the Web needle in 2002 and 2003. “When we talk about mobile, it is great to talks about how it could be successful,” MMA president Laura Marriott told me the other day. “But until we get common qualitative and quantitative measures, it is difficult to convince marketers to get money behind it.”
It feels a bit like 2001 all over again, where the needle really has to move out of the hype-and-promise zone into measurable, comparative, results.
Nike Risks Viral Backlash With Kobe Video On YouTube April 22, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a comment| Nike Risks Viral Backlash With Kobe Video On YouTube | |
| by Sarah Mahoney, Tuesday, Apr 22, 2008 5:00 AM ET | |
The launch of Nike’s Hyperdunk recently, its lightest basketball shoe ever, is getting an unexpected boost from a viral video. But the footage, doctored to show basketball legend Kobe Bryant “jumping over” a speeding sports car, is sparking plenty of questions from observers-some about safety, and others about the role of authenticity in brand positioning.The 53-second video showing Bryant bounding over an Aston Martin has become a hit on YouTube, garnering nearly 2.5 million views in its different versions. In just a few weeks, it’s sparked lengthy-albeit fairly moronic-debates among viewers about whether it’s real or not. (Not, says Nike. Like the L.A. Lakers would let Bryant run the risk of turning into the world’s most expensive pancake?) On one level, it’s a marketing hit, too. “Just on the basis of word of mouth-are they building buzz and creating conversations? – it’s doing quite well,” says Pete Blackshaw, EVP of Nielsen Online Strategic Services and author of the upcoming Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000: Running a Business in Today’s Consumer-Driven World. “There are companies that brag when 2,000 people watch their viral videos.” But it’s also sparked a handful of teenage copycat videos, and safety advocates are concerned. While Bryant opens and closes the video with the obligatory “Don’t try this at home” legalese, “we’ve got a lot of kids who are looking to be famous online,” says Parry Aftab, a security, privacy and cyberspace lawyer. “They are bored, and live anonymous lives, and are looking for something that would put them on top of the pack for being brave or cool or funny.” Certainly, many YouTubers (not to mention cranky parents) agree. “So when is the YouTube video [appearing] of the kids getting run [over] by Mom’s Toyota trying this?” writes one. “Think no one is that stupid?” Adds another: “You are gonna have about 5,000 kid Kobe fans who try this and all the retards who came up with this idea are gonna have blood on their hands,” adds another, helpfully linking to a handful of videos, all posted pre-Kobe, of teens actually getting mowed down trying to pull off similar stunts. “THIS IS THE WORST IDEA IN THE HISTORY OF SHOE ADS!! THE WORST! LEAVE IT TO KOBE!” screams another. While the flattening of potential shoe-shoppers is a concern, “certainly, if people get hurt as a result of this, it will turn out to be a big negative for Nike,” says Ed Keller, CEO of the Keller Fay Group, a word-of-mouth research consulting company in New Brunswick, N.J. A separate question for marketers is whether this kind of buzz can drive sales. “If the online conversation is mostly about whether the ads are fake or not, and centers on how they created that effect,” he asks, “does that help with overall brand momentum?” Certainly, there’s a contingent of outraged watchers: “This is as fake as Kobe,” snorts one of the more polite Kobe and Nike bashers, and there’s much debate about which other basketball stars might be able to pull off such a leap-for real. But for the most part, viewers seem to be pretty fascinated with just how the spot was shot. “Most people realize that sports figures’ contracts usually prevent them from even riding motorcycles, let alone leaping over moving vehicles-and this is lighthearted enough that it won’t turn people off,” says Blackshaw. Bryant himself has described the shot in two words that say it all: “That’s Hollywood!” Even some safety advocates agree. “Most teens are savvy enough to see through this,” says Liz Perle, editor-in-chief of Common Sense Media, a San Francisco-based group that reviews media for parents. While she says the Nike video definitely “skirts the line” of what’s safe, “for most kids, there’s a real suspension of disbelief-they know about special effects and Photoshop.” Of course, she adds, that’s not to say some kid might not get hurt trying to recreate the Kobe jump. “But there will always be copy-cat behavior, and kids can find plenty of ways to hurt themselves without Kobe Bryant.” Aftab, who is also the founder of Wired Safety, a children’s advocacy group, disagrees. “At some point, I think the Federal Trade Commission will step in to rule on the safety of these viral ads, just as they do for TV.” Nike, meanwhile, maintains that the video is completely safe. “One of our goals at Nike is to always consider the safety of our athletes and others, and we wouldn’t want anyone to re-enact this,” says KeJuan Wilkins, a Nike spokesperson. “This was done with professional editing and something people practiced and rehearsed. ” Of course, whether it sells Hyperdunks is still to be determined-the shoe isn’t scheduled to hit U.S. stores until late July. “We wanted to get something out there to generate excitement and buzz as we head toward the Olympics,” says Wilkins. “The beauty of a project like this is that people can watch it as much as they want and as often as they want. And many of the kids we’re trying to reach live in this digital world.” Certainly, Keller says, “if you can put out a video and get a couple of million views, that will help seed a new product launch.” But it isn’t without risks. “This is the double edge sword of word-of-mouth and consumer-generated media,” says Blackshaw. “This is the new epicenter of consumer attention, but it doesn’t always cut in the brand’s best direction.”
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MediaPost People On The Move April 22, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentORLENA YEUNG has been named vice president of marketing for Last.fm. Yeung, formerly the global brand manager at Microsoft Xbox, will oversee all aspects of Last.fm’s marketing strategy. |
| DAVID VERKLIN will step down as CEO of Aegis Media at the end of the year and SARAH FAY has been named to replace him. |
TOM DEMPSEY was named director of digital investment for GroupM North America, a new position. Dempsey joins GroupM from his previous role as managing partner, director of national broadcast at Mediaedge:cia. |
PAMELA HENNING was named senior vice president, integrated and emerging media, for Fox Cable Entertainment Networks. Henning joins the company from The Weinstein Company, having served as senior vice president, global integrated marketing. |
DONOVAN BATISTE was promoted to research director, up from research manager, for Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel. |
JEFFERSON C.M. COOMBS has been named executive vice president at Campbell-Ewald. Most recently, Coombs was vice president of marketing and sales at Planet Out Inc. & RSVP Vacations. |
gkv promoted ROBIN ROMBRO and JESSICA LOEWE to associate media directors. |
DAVE DUGAN joined BzzAgent as senior vice president of strategy and partnerships. He joins the company from Digitas, where he most recently served as senior vice president of corporate strategy. |
EVIE SILVERS was named to the newly created position of manager, technology and business development at the National Association of Television Programming Executives. Silvers joins NATPE from HP EXPO INC, where she was a senior account executive. |
LevLane, Philadelphia promoted FREDERICK J. LIEBNER III to account coordinator. |
ML Rogers, New York hired YURI DHARA as account director on the Scotts Miracle-Gro account. Most recently, she was group account director at Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve, New York working on the Pepsi account. |
Colangelo Synergy Marketing hired PETER HILL as interactive creative director. He joins the agency from Avenue A | Razorfish, Atlanta where he was creative director, responsible for Carnival, Burt’s Bees, Lenovo and Southwest airlines. |
NetPlus Marketing hired JOHN SHANLEY, formerly of G2interactive, as creative director. |
Story Worldwide named BARBARA RIEHL as New York advertising director. Riehl joined the company from AdweekMedia, where she served as account manager. |
LinkedIn hired DALE DURRETT as eastern region sales manager. Most recently, Durrett was at FiLife, where he served as the company’s vice president of advertising sales. |
AIMEE CAMPBELL joined CBS Radio in Chicago as digital account executive. |
MICHAEL NEVINS was named director of mobile for GroupM North America, a new position. Nevins most recently worked as vice president of sales at Crisp Wireless. |
SEAN MILLER joined R/GA as associate planning director. Most recently, Miller worked at The Integer Group, part of the TBWA Marketing Services portfolio, serving as director of insight and strategy. |
Euro RSCG Chicago elevated BERNARDO GOMEZ to group creative director on the Sprint account. Additionally, he will continue to oversee general creative duties for EFFEN Vodka. Previously, Gomez was creative director on Citi. |
Javelin Direct hired JIM NEWELL as associate creative director, responsible for managing branding and marketing for Roche ACCU-CHEK products and Spear Cosmetics. Most recently, he worked at Rapp Collins as vice president, group creative director, where he oversaw all direct marketing for Mercedes-Benz. |
Red Tettemer hired ANNIE HECKENBERGER as community trailblazer. Most recently, she served as social media director for the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corporation, a client of the agency. |
Euro RSCG Worldwide named JOSE CABACO as chief creative officer, North America. He joins the agency from Wieden + Kennedy, where he served as creative director, first in Amsterdam and more recently in Portland, Ore. |
Online tracking rules must exclude research, says CMOR April 22, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentOnline tracking rules must exclude research, says CMOR Via Research-Live.com
Industry association urges FTC to clarify definitions for regulating online tracking
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US– Industry association CMOR is calling for research to be made exempt from definitions of ‘behavioural tracking’, as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) drafts principles for regulating online behavioural advertising.
CMOR said in a submission to the FTC that although it supports “most of the concepts and goals” underpinning the principles, the specific proposals “could have significant negative consequences for the survey and opinion research profession, and strangle many possible new methods of research… before they’ve even been conceived”.
It called on the FTC, which published the principles and invited comment on them in January, to “flesh out and clarify” its broad definition of behavioural advertising, to ensure that it does not restrict tracking for legitimate research purposes.
FTC spokeswoman Claudia Bourne Farrell told Research: “We’re reviewing the comments and contemplating what steps we should take.”
CMOR expressed similar concerns about proposals from consumer groups for a ‘do-not-track’ list, which were put to the FTC in October last year.
The groups behind the do-not-track idea have claimed it does not target researchers, but CMOR’s director of government affairs Howard Fienberg said: “If that’s the case they need to make that explicit.”
CMOR said that in the form proposed, the list “would make no useful distinction between tracking data collected for research, transactional, political, governmental, or commercial/sales purposes”.
Some consumer groups were not convinced by CMOR’s arguments for protecting research. In his blog, Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy called the submission “self-serving” and said “researchers can’t be given a free pass to push the limits of data mining in the digital era”.
Fienberg warned that it’s a “very short step” from self-regulatory guidelines to regulation being imposed by lawmakers. Moves are already afoot in Connecticut and New York to introduce regulation of behavioural advertising, and other states may soon follow, he said.
George Pappachen, director of privacy and public policy at Safecount, which seeks to promote methods of web measurement that don’t threaten privacy, pointed out that research can be a powerful force in favour of consumer privacy. “The opportunity is to understand consumers to the point of knowing what they’ll accept and what they won’t accept,” he said. “On one hand we want to educate the marketplace but on the other hand we want to bridge the gap between consumers and the marketplace.”
When it comes to building public understanding and support, Pappachen believes the online research industry has a lot of work to do. “The ordinary person probably doesn’t understand it nearly as well as they need to,” he said. “Marketing is not the research industry’s strong suit. It’s not something that’s been high on their agenda but it’s definitely something they need to focus on.”
Author: Robert Bain
NBC News, msnbc.com Partner With MySpace April 22, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentDecision ‘08 will be available to more than 100 million active MySpace users worldwide.
John Consoli
APRIL 22, 2008 –
NBC News and msnbc.com will be the exclusive news and information provider for MySpace’s Decision ‘08, an online center for in-depth 2008 election-related news, analysis and discussion, under a new partnership between the online social network and the NBC Universal owned news organizations.
Decision ‘08 will be available to more than 100 million active MySpace users worldwide, and will be a component of MySpace’s IMPACT Channel, the site’s hub for civic and social engagement.
As part of the site, there will be interactive opportunities for users to engage with NBC News and msnbc.com content, news anchors and reporters during the coming months of the election season.
Decision ‘08 goes live today (April 22) and will offer the latest election coverage, news feeds and daily videos from NBC News and msnbc.com. The site will also have user-generated content and will link to profiles of NBC News and MSNBC anchors and reporters, including Brian Williams, Tim Russert and Chris Matthews.
“The 2008 election is proving to be the most youth- and technology-driven race in history, and MySpace is a significant forum for political discussion today,” said Lee Brenner, Director of IMPACT and executive producer of political programming at MySpace. “We are privileged today to be partnering with such revered news organizations as NBC News and msnbc.com, and to be taking our first steps in what will be a unique and engaging collaboration for the MySpace community.”
“NBC News has never been more committed to delivering quality news and information where
and when our users and viewers want it,” said Mark Lukasiewicz, vp of digital media at NBC News. “The Decision ‘08 hub at MySpace will give everyone in the vast MySpace community access to the information and tools they need to engage in this crucial election.”
MySpace is a unit of Fox Interactive Media Inc.
YouTube's filtering issues still not 'moot' April 22, 2008
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , add a commentCan you tell I’m playing catchup? yea , well we had a break.
Anyway Social Networking watch drove me over to this great article on Cnet about YouTube
LAS VEGAS–A year ago Wednesday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt delighted an audience of TV and radio broadcasters when he promised to roll out a system that would mean the end of piracy at YouTube.
“We are in the process of developing tools which are called ‘Claim Your Content,’” Schmidt said at the National Association of Broadcasters 2007 conference. “If people tell us this is a licensed copy, our computers will automatically detect that an illegal copy has been uploaded and then automatically delete it.”
Schmidt went on to say YouTube was “close to turning this (system) on” and once that happened, copyright violation at the site “becomes a moot issue.” But following through on that promise has proven a challenge.
Executives with two entertainment companies that provide YouTube with feedback on its Video Identification system said the company’s filtering technology has fared well at times but is nowhere near perfect and overall test results are “inconclusive.” The sources, who requested anonymity because of the ongoing relationship with YouTube, added that managers at the video-sharing site continue to try and refine the system.
“Since launching in October, our Video Identification system has shown terrific results in its comprehensiveness, accuracy, and scalability,” a YouTube spokeswoman said in an e-mail. “Over 100 partners from independent content creators to large media companies are currently using Video ID to easily manage their content. Many have found it to be a helpful tool in generating revenue and exposure for their content in the world’s largest online video community.”
For a long time, numerous copyright owners accused YouTube and Google of profiting from piracy and deliberately dragging their feet in developing a way to cleanse the site. They argued that the availability of professionally created content–uploaded by users–is what draws people to YouTube and without that the site would lose much of its luster. YouTube has always denied the accusations.
Nonetheless, the controversy has damaged some of Google’s relationships in Hollywood.
Viacom, parent company of MTV and Paramount Pictures, filed a $1 billion lawsuit against Google last year. That case is expected to last years before being resolved and it could help decide what, if anything, a Web site’s responsibilities are when it comes to policing for copyright violations.
Copyright clips abound
Certainly at this point, it’s hard to see much change at YouTube since launching Video ID.
Available on the site are literally countless clips from feature films and TV shows produced by small production companies as well as the largest entertainment conglomerates–including Viacom.
Key into YouTube’s search field the names of the last five Academy Award winners in the best picture category and scenes from each will appear. Want to watch the first 10 minutes of the gangster flick, The Departed? They’re there. Someone else posted a series of 12 separate scenes from the film, presumably to get around YouTube’s 10-minute clip limit.
Fans of Clint Eastwood’s Million Dollar Baby can watch the “Mo cuishle” episode on YouTube as well as the coin toss scene from last year’s best picture winner No Country For Old Men.
Identifying video is not easy, YouTube execs have long said. About 10 hours of video is uploaded to the site every minute. In addition to policing an enormous volume of video, YouTube must first obtain high-quality copies so it can create a digital fingerprint of the film or show. Ideally, the automated system will recognize when someone uploads an unauthorized copy.
While copyright videos are still plentiful on YouTube, there are seemingly fewer complaints from Hollywood. The sources who are part of YouTube’s testing say the entertainment industry has shown a willingness to give YouTube time to improve filtering.
Some content owners may have also concluded that some degree of piracy is inevitable.
“We still see our content pop up on YouTube,” CNN.com Executive Producer Sandy Malcolm told the Associated Press this week. “You deal with it. You try to work with them on rights and things, but I don’t think you can completely stop it. You just try to beat the tide and try to get your content out as fast as you can.”
Google execs continue to say they respect copyright and are working to protect it. Schmidt said protecting copyright was in Google’s best interest.
“We are critically dependent upon the production of copyright content,” Schmidt told the NAB audience a year ago. “Literally, people come to Google to get to somewhere where there is something of value. It’s very important that we not violate copyright.”

The launch of Nike’s Hyperdunk recently, its lightest basketball shoe ever, is getting an unexpected boost from a viral video. But the footage, doctored to show basketball legend Kobe Bryant “jumping over” a speeding sports car, is sparking plenty of questions from observers-some about safety, and others about the role of authenticity in brand positioning.