Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , Sling.com will aggregate full-length episodes of current and classic network TV series
Sling Media—makers of the innovative, though still yet-to-crack-the-mainstream Slingbox—has quietly rolled out Sling.com, an online video site which aggregates full-length episodes of current and classic network TV series.
Sling.com’s content lineup and users interface echoes similar efforts in the race to create a singular online destination for professionally produced content, such as NBC Universal/News Corp’s joint venture Hulu.com, Comcast’s Fancast and Joost.
Read The Rest—>Sling Media Launches New Video Site
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , June 9, 2008
-By Mike Shields
This summer, Disney Family.com plans to roll out a new parent-oriented social networking platform that will provide users with the ability to create profiles for their entire family using customizable avatars.
The new community will be different from typical social networks, which emphasize individual profiles. “This is about when your family becomes your identity over your self,” explained Maureen Bergmeuller, director of marketing. Disney Family.com. Thus, the new, yet-to-be named network will be designed to help parents meet other families in similar lifestages (such as parents of moms recovering from c-sections or families with autistic children).
Plus, unlike sites such as Facebook, Disney Family.com’s editorial content will be woven through the social network, encouraging discussion among members.
Marketers will have several ways to integrate their brands into the new platform, including product-placement images that users can incorporate into their avatars. The site will feature a collection of “stickers” or images that users can employ to complement their personal signatures within the site’s message boards. Those stickers can also feature brand messaging.
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Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , The embattled portal has landed a unique multi-year global ad deal with Havas Digital -LINK to Original Source Article
June 4, 2008
-By Mike Shields
Yahoo on Wednesday (June 4) made a series of announcements detailing the company’s expanding footprint in the online advertising space on multiple fronts, just as the company faces intensifying pressure from high profile investor Carl Icahn, who’s been calling for the ouster of CEO Jerry Yang. (see www.usatoday.com/tech/techinvestor/corporatenews/2008-06-03-yahoo-icahn_N.htm).
Among the various announcements, the embattled portal said it has landed a unique multi-year global ad deal with Havas Digital that will see the agency group become an active player in the Right Media Exchange, which promises to become an outlet for publishers and agencies to buy and sell remnant ad inventory. As part of the deal, Havas has also committed to become a guinea pig participant in Yahoo’s AMP! platform, a set of buying, selling and trafficking tools, which promise to reduce some of the pain inherent to online advertising’s processes.
In addition, Yahoo announced an eye-opening partnership with Wal-Mart to sell video and display advertising for Walmart.com. That deal is noteworthy given that the majority of top ecommerce sites (such as Amazon.com or Dell.com) carry little to no advertising—though Yahoo did ink a similar groundbreaking deal with eBay several years ago.
Yahoo is also launching a new ad platform designed for retail brands that promises to recreate Sunday newspaper circulars on the Web. Via the new Yahoo Circular program, users can receive personalized shopping circulars online any day of the week.
Of course, Yahoo has pushed to strengthen its ties to the newspaper business over the last few years just as local online advertising is set to enjoy a major growth spurt. The company’s successful Newspaper Consortium, which enables it to share content and advertising sales resources with local newspapers across the U.S., has added 94 new members, bringing the total to 779 newspapers.
Lastly, Yahoo said it is joining the CBS Audience Network, the much-hyped syndication network via which CBS distributes full length episodes of a multitude of its current and past prime time hits, such as CSI and Survivor, to sites ranging from AOL to Bebo. Yahoo, which already works with Hulu’s similar multisite distribution network, was the most conspicuous holdout from CBS’s push toward spreading its content all over the Web.
Clearly, as its months-long entanglement with Microsoft continues, reignited by Icahn’s recent statements, Yahoo is hoping to change the subject by touting its leadership and clout in the online advertising business. That was the emphasis of a keynote address delivered on Wednesday by president Sue Decker at the Advertising 2.0 conference in New York. “Yahoo is helping to accelerate the transformation of how display advertising is both bought and sold,” she said. “First, we are developing the technology, products and platforms that are designed to help advertisers find the right audiences and publishers find the right advertisers.”
“Second, we are partnering with publishers to secure and monetize inventory that advertisers and agencies find desirable,” she added. “And third, we are partnering with advertisers and agencies to channel demand to the right consumer.”
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , NBCU Unveils Digital Health Network
May 12, 2008
-By Mike Shields
NBC Universal has announced plans to package and distribute a collection of health-related video content across a network of niche Web sites.
The new Digital Health Network will cull together health videos produced by the company’s various networks, local stations and Web properties, which churn out nearly 100 such clips per week according to executives. NBCU plans to syndicate these clips –which range from conditions specific fare to general health segments –on sites such as Healthline.com, RightHealth.com and YourTotalHealth.com.
The network, which is being run by newly promoted general manager Mitzi Reaugh, enters a crowded space on the Web, albeit one increasingly coveted by health care and pharmaceutical advertisers. Just last month, IAC partnered with The HealthCentral Network to form an ad network claiming to reach 45 million unique users. And in the past several years, WebMd.com, About.com and the EverydayHealth network have each upped the amount of original health-related video content they produce on a regular basis.
However, NBCU chief digital officer George Kliavkoff sees an opening. “This sophisticated audience has been completely underserved and we believe that the NBC Digital Health Network will enable publishers to provide the information and integrated experience that users have long been looking for.”
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , IAB Introduces Online Video Ad Guidelines
The IAB’s new guidelines cover three basic forms of online video ad formats.
May 5, 2008
-By Mike Shields
The Interactive Advertising Bureau introduced a set of guidelines on Monday (May 5) aimed at bringing more standards to online video advertising–and ultimately to make the still burgeoning medium easier for advertisers to buy.
The new guidelines cover three basic forms of online video ad formats: linear ads–interruptive video spots which are typically of the pre-roll variety, non-linear ads–which include the increasingly popular ‘overlay’ ad units, and companion ads–banner-like ads that appear alongside video as it plays on the Web.
The guidelines are the product of work conducted by the IAB’s Digital Video Committee, which is composed of 145 leading media companies, including Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, among others. In announcing the guidelines, IAB officials did not shy away from placing significance on the industry cooperation achieved in creating the guidelines and the impact they will have.
“This is a historic day,” said IAB president and CEO Randall Rothenberg, likening the announcement to a similar set of landmark guidelines put in place for banner advertising in the late 1990s. David Doty, the IAB’s senior vp, thought leadership and marketing, predicted “seismic shifts” would occur in the online ad business as a result of their adoption.
The new guidelines, which are viewed by IAB members as suggestions rather than rules, cover everything from how long pre-roll spots should be (no longer than 30-seconds) to specific file sizes, color depths and bit rates for various placements. The guidelines also look to enforce standards of consumer control for video ads–as the IAB urges publishers and advertisers to make most video ads user-initiated with options to stop and start video play on-demand.
But it’s the potential for standardization of video creative formats that has many in the industry excited about the guidelines, based on comments made during a panel discussion held during Monday’s IAB Leadership Forum at The Roosevelt Hotel in New York. When different sites and ad networks require unique creative specifics for video, “that hits our production budgets several different times,” said Deva Bronson, digital media manager, KFC. That sort of dynamic makes it tough to recommend running an online video campaign on a wide range of sites, she added.
Adam Shlachter, senior partner, group director, MEC Interaction, concurred, adding that agencies often need to weigh the tradeoffs between the expected impact of adding more video sites to a buy with the associated trafficking and production labor. Sometimes, those factors make it harder to justify online video to clients. “It’s really difficult,” he said. “Especially because it’s so nascent.”
Mike Shields
DECEMBER 17, 2007 –
Two years ago, MSN’s sales team started having talks with retailers in the spring about locking up key ad avails for the holiday shopping season. Last year, those conversations were pushed up to February. Now, according to Mike Hard, MSN’s vp, U.S. online ad sales, his team is spending the current holiday season talking about the next one, and in some cases is selling inventory a year or more in advance.
That flurry of advanced selling is indicative of an emerging trend in online advertising—a business typified by perpetual media planning. Even as the medium continues to expand and fragment, and as the industry preaches long tail and audience aggregation, sellers from top sites say that many brands have been pushing them for more upfront-style buying.
Many note that categories such as retail, pharmaceuticals, travel and packaged goods are following the lead of the automotive business, which for the past few years has seen advertisers commit significant portions of their budgets to the top handful of publishers in each segment on a yearly basis.
Several forces appear to propelling this trend. The Web is becoming a more crucial ad vehicle for traditional brands, and thus the dollars are getting more serious (eMarketer predicts growth of 29 percent in 2008). And, as many categories grow more competitive, brands risk being shut out of the most desired inventory if they don’t move quickly.
“We’ve definitely seen some pretty dramatic changes in the way people are doing upfronts,” said Hard. “It’s been particularly dramatic in the last three or four months.”
That’s not to say the Web is going the way of TV and brands will soon be dumping two-thirds of their budgets for the year during a single week in May anytime soon. Rather, sellers say online advertising’s version of an upfront turns the old model on its head. “What’s different is that advertisers are leading the upfront instead of the publishers,” said Scott Meyer, CEO, About.com. “They are inviting their key publishers in. It’s flipped around.”
Of course, as the number of pages consumed on the Web continues to grow, particularly with the explosion of user-generated content, there is no shortage of inventory. But, “there is not lots of quality out there,” observed Meyer. “It’s mostly low-rate, undifferentiated stuff. Marketers are realizing that quality stuff is going earlier and earlier.”
The quality of inventory that tends to go early, according to sellers, is super-targeted content (like the Web pages related to specific car models, for example), home-page avails, video and those ever-elusive “big ideas” that clients always seem to want. “More advertisers want custom packages,” explained Sheryl Goldstein, senior vp, sales, About.com, who spent the last several years at AOL. “And the only way to do that is selling upfront.”
One publishing segment where upfront selling is becoming prevalent is health, as online marketing becomes increasingly crucial to the pharmaceutical industry. Greg Smith, COO of Neo@Ogilvy North America, said that several years ago, he was encouraging pharma clients to sign deals with top health publishers like WebMD.com for as long as three years “to grab every single cholesterol impression out there.”
Michael Keriakos, co-founder and executive vp of Waterfront Media, the parent company of Everyday Health, said that for the first time his company was invited to several advertiser-led upfront events this year. As a result, the company has already locked up 35 percent to 40 percent of its revenue goals for 2008.
Wayne Gattinella, president and CEO of WebMD, said his site’s experience was similar, and that several brands committed 2008 budgets by September. “That was earlier than any time previously,” he said. “I wouldn’t categorize it as a tidal wave. But these are large commitments of scale.”
Beauty also is buying in early, according to Tessa Wegert, interactive media strategist, Enlighten. Wegert said that for her client Kao Brands (Bioré, Jergens), there are two or three core beauty sites, including style.com, that have become must-buys, and competition is fierce. “In the last few years, we found that we need to be buying way in advance of when we would for other clients,” she added.
A similar dynamic exists in the bridal space, according to Carrie Reynolds, publisher, TheKnot.com, which has participated in upfront selling for several years for many endemic brands. Lately, “what’s happening is that nonendemic brands are starting to adopt these practices,” she said.
Yet some buyers remain highly skeptical of this trend. In fact, many bristle when the word “upfront” is even uttered. Regardless, the consensus is that as online advertising matures, it’s become somewhat more cyclical. “Buying and selling is getting a little bit less crazy than it was,” said Jeff Ratner, North American digital director, MindShare Interaction. “But there is still a lot of opportunistic buying.”
Amanda Richman senior vp, director of digital services, MediaVest, wondered whether some sellers were overstating the importance of such upfront events. For digital buyers, “it’s a 52-week upfront,” she said.
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , Report: Web-Video User Growth Slows
December 03, 2007
Mike Shields
The number of users regularly streaming video on the Web continues to climb, though growth has slowed over the last six months, according to a new report issued by comScore.
Nearly three quarters, or 74.8 percent of all Web users watched a video online during the month of September, up less than a full percentage point from May, the last time comScore issued such a report. That translates to 136 million people viewing video clips online during September, roughly four million more people than did so in May.
Google, backed by the enduring popularity of YouTube, continues to dominate online video market share. Google sites accounted for nearly 28.3 percent of all videos streamed in September, as 71.6 million unique users streamed videos on its properties (close to 70 million on YouTube alone). In total, Google reached close to two fifths of the total online video viewing audience.
Fox Interactive Media sites, which include MySpace and MySpaceTV, delivered videos to 41.2 million users, while 39.6 million users turned to Yahoo sites to stream clips. Surprisingly, Fox Interactive Media properties lost more than 10 million unique viewers from May to September.
While the number of users turning to the Web for video may be slowing down, most are still increasing the amount of time they are spending watching video content over the Internet, found comScore. The average streamer spent three hours consuming video in September, up from 2.5 hours back in May, said the report. Over 9.2 billion videos in total were streamed during September.
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized ,
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Marketers Turn to Web Ad Nets Mike Shields JULY 23, 2007 – Online ad networks, long the domain of direct marketers looking to blast their “act now” offers to large audiences across the Web, are being invaded by brand advertisers. And, some say, those traditional, image-focused marketers are shoving aside their direct-marketing cousins that, as it happens, helped carry the Internet ad business through its darkest days early this decade. There’s little doubt that the robust market for online advertising—particularly among traditional brands—has benefitted from leading networks like Advertising.com, ValueClick and Blue Lithium. Those players, many of which date back to the mid-1990s, aggregate ad space across numerous sites, ranging from remnant inventory on larger sites to ad space on thousands of smaller sites. Several of the networks boast reach that rivals that of the portals. For example, AOL-owned Advertising.com, which was built as a network focused purely on direct response, says it reaches a whopping 158 million unique users, or 88 percent of the Internet. “For us, brands are the fastest growing part of our business,” said Advertising.com president Lynda Clarizio. As major marketers like Ford Motor Co. and Procter & Gamble increase their online budgets, “they’re left with the issue of needing to spend money beyond the portals,” said Brian Fitzgerald, president of Gorilla Nation Media, an online rep firm working with more than 500 publishers. “So they are saying, ‘Let’s start spending it on the mid-tail’”—exactly where the ad networks have strength. Ad categories that have embraced networks in a big way over the past year include autos, consumer electronics, pharmaceuticals and packaged goods, and big spenders in those categories often look to make a splash, said David Yovanno, general manager of ValueClick Media. “The trend is that we are getting more whales [big brands that take over all inventory] than we used to.” Some say those “whales” are causing a problem for marketers like LowerMyBills.com and University of Phoenix, the ubiquitous online brands that are the equivalent of late-night infomercials. A few years ago, those players blanketed the Web with their messages by buying bulk inventory at low prices. Now, insiders say, they’re getting squeezed to the fringes. “I definitely think that is happening on the quality [Web] inventory,” said Will Margiloff, CEO of Innovation Interactive, parent of search agency 360i. “DR advertisers are being pushed aside to less desirable inventory.” Yovanno said that while ValueClick’s bread and butter is still DR spenders, he’s seen some bargain-basement advertisers get marginalized. “There used to be brands like Casino.net that dropped a million dollars a month,” he said. “They haven’t really evolved since then. They always grinded everybody down on price.” Once bigger brands came along, he added, “It was so easy to squeeze them out.” Some in the network business say it’s only going to get tougher—even for more established brands like Vonage that rely on tonnage to sign up customers—as online video becomes more prominent, since it doesn’t necessarily lend itself to driving immediate response. If that holds true, it could change Web-marketing for good. After all, could a Netflix or Orbitz build names for themselves the way they did a few years ago? “Many great brands were built because online media was so inexpensive,” said Michael Cassidy, CEO of Undertone Networks. “They were able to leverage a buyer’s market to brand online while only paying for direct response.” Adam Kasper, senior vp, director of digital media at Media Contacts, which handles Vonage, believes direct marketers will soon shift away from networks and toward ad exchanges that better suit their needs. Recently, he’s noticed, networks are catering more to mainstream brands. “Ad networks in general are starting to become less of a clearinghouse for impressions and are starting to become more full service,” he said. That means offering more assistance with creative and ad-serving. Scott Hagedorn, OMD Digital’s director of innovation, said his agency still spends millions with networks on behalf of DR-oriented clients. And the surge of brand spending, coupled with more savvy clients, has forced networks to be more accountable, he added, offering brands more buying control and transparency while agreeing to more stringent terms and conditions on insertion orders. Besides cleaning up their operations, both Hagedorn and Kasper said, networks are getting more sophisticated when it comes to behavioral targeting, appealing to both to DR and brand advertisers. Yovanno said 20 percent of RFPs ValueClick receives ask for behavioral targeting, versus just 5 percent a year ago. That’s essential, as competition grows more fierce, said Jay Sears, senior vp, strategic products and business development at ContextWeb, which recently launched ADSDAQ, an online ad exchange focused on premium inventory. “You are going to see consolidation [in the space]. Unless you have a unique targeting ability, you are not going to be around for a while.” But some doubt that ad networks will ever be able to service big brands to a large degree, simply because large publishers will never be inclined to let others sell their best inventory. “That’s always going to be a barrier,” said Ben Crain, vp, media at Rapt, which consults publishers on the pricing of online ad inventory. “I don’t know if there will ever be a critical mass of brand advertisers on networks. I don’t think the University of Phoenix has anything to worry about.” |
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , Study: Link Between Ad Spend, Blog Buzz
Mike Shields
JULY 16, 2007 –
For new brands, there is a strong correlation between ad spending and buzz generated in the blogosphere, one that shouldn’t be ignored when it comes to making media planning decisions.
That’s according to a new report issued jointly by Nielsen BuzzMetrics and Nielsen’s BASES research division, which finds that marketers that treat tradtional advertising and word of mouth management as two separate animals do so in error, since the two are closely connected. Nielsen’s research – which analyzed factors such as buzz volume in blogs, spending, purchase intent among consumers and actual sales – has found that a big advertising budget is the best predictor of significant blog buzz, rather than tactics that attempt to specifically influence such online world of mouth.
Among 80 consumer packaged goods brands launched in 2005 and 2006 that Nielsen studied, the top 10 percent of products with the most buzz spend nearly $20 million in advertising. In contrast, the products that accounted for the bottom 50 percent of buzz generated spent roughly $5 million, or a quarter of what the most buzz-generating brands spent.
However, ad spending is not the only factor in play, found the report, as certain brands simply lend themselves to more buzz. Just 10 percent of the brands studied accounted for 85 percent of total buzz generated, indicating that select brands drove more than their share of interest. Nielsen said it discovered that over the counter drug brands – given consumers’ high involvment with them – along with brands with edgy image drove a disproportionate amount of buzz.
“Most CPG products are everyday items, lacking in distinction and therefore propensity for buzz,” said Kate Neiderhoffer, director of methodology, Nielsen BuzzMetrics. “However, there are some exceptions to the rule, as evidenced by brands like Red Bull, Altoids, Crystal Pepsi and Viagra. The CPG industry should challenge itself to bring more innovative products to market, cultivated with more innovative marketing. The buzz will follow.”
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , CondéNet to Sell Ads for Sartorialist
Mike Shields
JULY 16, 2007 –
CondéNet’s fashion focused Web properties – Style.com and Men.style.com – said they will begin selling advertising for The Sartorialist, a similarly themed blog. The agreement, which begins on Sept. 1, marks one of the few times that either site will represent inventory for a non-CondéNet site.
The new partnership is the result of a traditional media company reaching out to a new media competitor for help. Scott Schuman, who founded the Sartorialist back in September 2005, began a relationship with Men.style.com last year as produced a multimedia feature for the site on well-dressed men across the globe. That gig led to another assignment with Style.com for Schuman – who has also contributed to GQ in the past – and then eventually the newly announced advertising relationship.
According to CondéNet executives, the influential Sartorialist reaches over a million unique users per month, which should be attractive to both Men.style.com and Style.com’s advertisers base. “There are many synergies between the sites and The Sartorialist, and as such we will now be able to offer our advertising clients access to a leading fashion blog,” said Dee Salomon, senior vp, CondéNet.
