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Cell Phones and Credit Cards...
Changing the Face of Business... AGAIN |
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An article from Brandchanel.com
 It all started with a phone call Jack Dorsey received from a friend, a small business owner frustrated because he couldn't easily accept a credit card payment from a customer. Dorsey is not one to let opportunities pass him by. The co-founder of Twitter and two colleagues came up with a prototype for a mobile phone-based payment system.
Yesterday Dorsey unveiled "Square" -- via a tweet, of course. Square is just that, a really small plastic square that plugs into the headphone jack of an iPhone. Swipe a credit card through the device and the payment information is transmitted via an iPhone application. The product is now in beta; applications are expected to be available for the new Droid and Blackberry phones by early 2010.
The brilliance of Square is that it can work on any mobile device via an application, but no information is stored on the device. That's all done through a "person-to-person" payment system Dorsey designed from the ground up.
Dorsey tells GigaOM's Om Malik that Square is intended to be a service both to merchants and consumers. In fact, any consumer can become a merchant, since "Square owners are authenticated and attached to a bank account, much like PayPal." Dorsey offers the example of a Craigslist transaction: A buyer arrives to purchase a couch that may cost a few hundred dollars. Instead of the buyer carrying cash, he can pay the seller with a credit card through Square.
Om Malik sees Square as a potential game-changer in a world that increasingly depends on non-cash transactions:
The marriage of computing and connectivity without the shackles of being tethered to a location is one of the biggest disruptive forces of modern times. It is (and will continue) to redefine business models, for decades. Square is simply riding these waves."
Apparently others agree: Dorsey reportedly already has lined up investors who are putting $10 million into the San Francisco start-up. In this economy, that's something to tweet about.
 Read About Jane Fraser
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Neilson Kicks Into High Gear
Web Viewership Measurement on the Horizon |
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Nielsen Speeding Up Single-Source Measurement Plan
Will fold Web viewing into TV sample by August 2010
By Claire Atkinson -- Broadcasting & Cable, 12/1/2009 5:33:46 PM
Nielsen is fast-forwarding its plan to monitor viewers' Web habits in order to help clients understand, among other things, whether their advertising or TV promotion is working. The company announced Dec. 1 that it will complete a full roll out of Internet measurement as part of its existing TV panel by August 31, 2010.
Separately, the measurement company will announce in the coming weeks a timeline for tracking Web video viewing that will ultimately help media companies and agencies see viewing behavior between the TV and Web more clearly.
The end game would be monetizing Web viewing of TV more effectively as Nielsen prepares to develop a new model for C3, or commercial ratings, that would include shows watched online. The idea of tracking consumers' media habits on TV and online is referred to as single-source measurement. Nielsen already tracks Web viewing, as do ComScore and other players, via separate services that are not associated with its TV sample.
Nielsen held a meeting with clients in October to hear their thoughts on where Nielsen ought to be putting its efforts in terms of tracking single-source Web usage. The overwhelming feedback was that Nielsen move faster.
While the August 2010 target date might be slightly later than some cable entertainment channels had hoped for, since their peak viewing occurs in June, it is still a radical improvement on the previous timeline of year's end. The company will begin adding to the existing 375 TV and PC homes on December 23 and has drafted extra staff in order to meet the more aggressive timeline.
The meters work by requiring panelists to log in so that their every Web move can be attributed to a single individual. The meters will also have the ability to recognize Nielsen's audio codes.
"It is an estimate but we expect to [track] 20,000 people and 7,500 households and they would account for 12,000 computers," said Sara Erichson, president of Media Cleint Services North America, in an interview.
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How Technology Has Changed the World of Canadians
A Report from BBM ANALYTICS |
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Media Technology Monitor (MTM) Top 10 Results (August 2009)
10. Internet Video: High Reach, Low Usage. The media seems to go into a frenzy covering the latest developments in the Internet video space. Lots of Canadians are now watching Internet video, but the amount of time they actually spend watching is small.
9. Internet TV is catch-up TV. Why would you want to watch TV on a Computer? Well, people use the Internet to get TV for the same reason they have PVRs or watch TV programs on VOD: to “catch up” on missed episodes and for convenience. Of course, for most people a computer screen isn’t an ideal way to watch for an extended period of time, which is why news clips, sports highlights and comedy are the most common types of TV content accessed.
8. iPod, uPod, wePod. It seems like there is no end to the number of us using ear buds. iPod/MP3 players grew substantially again this year and most owners have Apple Pods.
7. Podcasting is more than radio. It seems like everyone who has content that can be converted to a spoken word audio format (with or without video) is getting into the podcasting game. Podcasting of conventional radio programs are losing ground to other types of content that are from newspapers, magazines and TV stations.
6. Canadians Love their HDTV Screens. They’re bigger, thinner and cheaper. Canadians can’t get enough of them. Nearly one in five of us have them and many of those even have two. And it seems the
more people get one, the more other people tell us they’re going to buy one.
5. The HDTV Receiver is an Afterthought. Don’t be confused: people don’t necessarily buy HDTV Screens for HDTV channels. Only half of people with an HDTV Screen also have an HDTV Receiver, which is necessary to receive HDTV channels. That ratio has improved, but intention to buy an HDTV
receiver is flat.
4. Digital Deadline 2011: Post-Transition Intentions Are Becoming Clear. In two short years, analog off-air TV will disappear in Canada. When it does, off-air TV households will have to change the way they
receive TV to either digital off-air or a subscription TV service. Off-air TV viewers are split evenly between which option they’ll choose, which means that the already small group that relies on TV off-air could be cut in half.
3. iPhones lift mobile video. People generally don’t watch video or TV on a cell phone and they consistently tell us that they’re not interested in doing so. Then, of course, along came the iPhone. Penetration levels are still small, but most who have them watch video on it and many use it to watch TV.
2. PVRs: Those who have them, use them a lot. The steady but modest growth of Personal Video Recorders (PVRs) continues. Just over 1 in 10 households have one, but users spend about half of their TV viewing time watching PVR’d programs.
1. Radio Still Rules. Audio choices used to be in two neatly defined boxes: radio and recorded music (e.g. CDs). With the Internet, iPods and satellite radio, the continuum of choice is much broader. But despite this, the simplicity and convenience of conventional radio is not lost on consumers. Even people who use new audio technologies listen to more conventional radio than any other audio source.
These findings are taken from the annual Media Technology Monitor (MTM), a survey conducted since 1997 with samples (6,000 Anglophones and 6,000 Francophones) and methodology that far exceeds industry
standards.
Read About Jane Fraser
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Brands Seek Fans on Facebook
article from ADWEEK |
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Oct 12, 2009
 SUCCESS FACTORS
by Brian Morrissey ADWEEK
Last week on Facebook, amid the cacophony of status updates, many men received a cheeky invitation -- "Turn up your man smell" -- from a hopeful new friend: Old Spice. The Procter & Gamble brand was running an ad on the social networking site hoping to increase its 55,000-strong Facebook fan base. By today, Old Spice boasted nearly 175,000.
Brands are finding themselves in a position similar to that of the new kids at summer camp: they're anxiously looking for friends. In the world of social media, the potency of a person's network has always been key. Now, this virtual popularity contest has been joined by advertisers, who are scrambling to build fan bases they hope to mobilize on behalf of their brands.
"These [efforts] are designed to foster word of mouth," says Jeremiah Owyang, a partner with Altimeter Group, which advises companies on social strategies. "Companies cannot traverse the Web quick enough. They need to create these unpaid armies of customers to do this on their behalf."
"It's a metric a senior marketer can identify with," adds Sarah Hofstetter, svp of emerging media and client strategy at digital agency 360i. "It becomes an easy way of measuring success."
Brands typically flock to Facebook thanks to its huge audience -- it crossed 300 million members last month, according to Facebook -- and the enviable amount of time users spend there (a whopping six hours a month per person, according to Nielsen).
Facebook does not keep statistics on the number of brands that have created pages on its platform. But most of the top brands have some sort of presence, and Facebook boasts that it has run campaigns from 83 of the top 100 brands.
Facebook's audience has proven mostly receptive to the invasion. Of the 15 most popular pages on the site, three belong to corporations: Coca-Cola, Starbucks and Skittles.
There's no media cost to setting up on Facebook, but brands often find the quickest way to build a sizable following is through -- you guessed it -- paid advertising.
Take Little Debbie. Nearly six months ago the snack food brand set up shop on Facebook with a standard fan page. It posted updates, uploaded old TV spots and waited. Crickets. Then, last Thursday, it rolled out an engagement ad "reach block" that messaged 21-49-year-olds touting a sweepstakes for a Smart car with the option to become a fan. Within 12 hours, Little Debbie's fan base went from 5,000 to over 125,000. It welcomed people with a message asking their favorite Little Debbie snack. It got over 6,000 comments.
"We now have a chance to talk to people who have raised their hands and said they love Little Debbie," says Jay Waters, chief strategy officer at Luckie, the Birmingham, Ala., agency working for Little Debbie. "All brands have a limited number of people who consider themselves fans. It's a way to give them something special."
TGI Friday's saw a big spike in users after running a Facebook ad campaign to promote the page it set up for a character called Woody, created by Publicis New York and Digitas. But it was only after the restaurant chain ran TV spots last month driving people to become fans of Woody that the page took off, according to Jason Steinberg, digital media director, Spark Communications, the Publicis shop that handled the social component of the campaign.
"TV was the big hammer," said Steineberg. "[Growth] was like an S curve."
Even for brands that succeed in building a fan base, the work is not yet half done. The real trick after any promotions or ad campaigns that lure in fans is keeping them interested with engaging and useful content. Many brands take a page out of news organizations and set up editorial calendars that include new products, brand content and polling. That inevitably brings up the question of who is in charge of the page. Some brands, like Little Debbie and Friday's, hand it off to agencies, but others keep it in-house.
Scott Monty, digital and multimedia communications manager at Ford, says keeping it in-house helps them communicate with consumers. "On the dialog front ... enthusiasts taking the time to seek out Ford would expect an official Ford rep to engage" with them, he says.
Communicating with a fan base comes with a challenge: the need to find a voice for the brand, which is what those most successful in building large followings typically have done. Yet all too often, the voice is more of a reflection of who's handling the communication than it is the brand personality, says Brian Solis, president of FutureWorks.
Like everything else in social media, measurement remains in flux. There is no standard framework for measuring the importance of a brand fan, although nearly everyone agrees it has value.
Still, the question remains how much more valuable a fan is than, say, someone who comments on a brand video, says Scott Symonds, gm of media, search and analytics at AKQA. "That's a big part of what we're trying to figure out," he says.
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Read About Jane Fraser
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In Vehicle Ad Competition on the Way
article from RBR.com |
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Radio has long fended off all comers when it comes to dominating the advertising space that exists within the confines of the private automobile. But a new competitor is getting ready to enter the market, bringing with it unique targeting ability – the GPS system.
The push is coming for GPS data-provider NAVTEQ, which feeds the information to GPS systems that allows them to do what they do. If the GPS is ad-enabled, NAVTEQ can target ads to the occupants on the vehicle based on location, context and user demographic information.
It conducted a survey of those owning an ad-enable GPS system, and found that 19% of those who noticed an ad clicked onto it for further information, and 6% actually visited a business establishment as a result of the ad.
The system, LocationPoint™ alerts a driver to the fact that they are in the proximity of, say, a fast food restaurant. It can also get coupons and other promotional material to the occupants.
Of the 757 people surveyed, 72% said the ads were an acceptable part of the GPS experience.
"This type of advertising reaches out and finds a consumer when they're most open to making purchase decisions," says NAVTEQ sales exec David Klein, "It's a vehicle that grabs the attention of a consumer near point of purchase and as the technology matures, it will offer increasing opportunities to interact with the consumer in ways that will deliver substantial benefits to advertisers."
Read About Jane Fraser
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DVR's -- the Silent Killer of Television Advertising
... an article I thought you'd be interested in |
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DVRs dominate talk at confab
Zucker, Rogers weigh in on two sides of TiVo debate
By Paul Bond
Sept 15, 2009, 08:55 PM ET
Jay Leno and Jeff Zucker have been thinking a lot about TiVo lately. And, at least in the case of the NBC Universal boss, not entirely in a good way.
Zucker was telling an investor conference on Tuesday that Leno's new 10 p.m. show is in part an answer to TiVo and its imitators and that he does not intend to bury his head in the sand when it comes to threats posed by DVRs.
Ironically, Zucker's remarks came at almost the same moment that TiVo CEO Tom Rogers was suggesting -- at the same conference, no less -- that some TV execs still underestimate how dramatically the game has changed since DVRs were introduced a decade ago.
"Commercial avoidance -- the issue that the media industry wants to avoid," Rogers said.
"I must say, I TiVo-ed Leno last night," Rogers continued. "I was tickled pink that he had as one of his first jokes, TiVo."
Leno on Monday quipped that, "I set my TiVo to record 'The Biggest Loser.' I got the Lions game." The Detroit Lions have lost 18 straight regular-season football games.
"Jeff Zucker started his comments a little while ago by talking about Jay Leno's new show and how they were going to deal with TiVo-ing it at 10 p.m.," Rogers said at the conference. "That's been a stated objective of theirs -- to make sure that there's an answer to the increased amount of recorded viewing at 10 o'clock."
Rogers might or might not be right about the disinterest in DVRs that is expressed -- or at least feigned -- by some TV execs. But that description certainly doesn't apply to Zucker.
"One of the biggest changes in television has been the digital video recorder," he said Tuesday. He promised that the new Leno show will be "as DVR-proof as you can be on television in this era," in part due to lots of product intergration.
And Rogers must have loved what the NBC Unversal CEO said a bit later: "The No. 1 most-watched show at 10 p.m. in the last season was a show called 'TiVo,' and it's a great show," said Zucker.
"We can't put our heads in the sand and pretend that people aren't using DVRs -- and that people aren't consuming content online," Zucker said. "We don't want to be the newspaper business. We don't want to be the recorded music business."
Zucker and Rogers were speaking in New York at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia XVIII Conference.
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Auto Ought to Pick Up
a report on Cash for Clunkers |
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Autos Ought to Pick Up
RADIO BUSINESS REPORT 09-04-2009
Cash for Clunkers did wonders for many automakers, but of the three big US companies, only Ford was able to effectively cash in. And it was very effective, enjoying a 17% gain in sales over August 2008. The good news for US brands in general is that consumers are thinking Buy American, and GM is poised to turn around, more so than Chrysler.
Ford alone was able to take effective advantage of Cash for Clunkers among US brands, placing two of its models – the Focus compact car and the Escape crossover – in the Clunker top 10 sellers. All of the others on the list came from overseas. According to the Detroit Free Press, Ford’s midsized Fusion is also selling well.
GM and Chrysler, focused on restructuring after receiving government bailout money, were not in a good position to react to Clunkers, and both lost money during the month of August compared to the same month in 2008.
However, there was good news for US manufacturers in general and for at least two of these companies in particular from Consumer Reports.
For starters, 81% of consumers surveyed with new car purchases in their future said they would consider a domestic brand, compared to 47% considering Asian brands and 46% considering European brands.
On a brand-specific basis, those willing to consider a Ford rose 17% compared to this point of 2008, and GM enjoyed a 6% increase. But Chrysler has a tough row to hoe – it lost 25% of its positive responses over the year.
Read About Jane Fraser
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Online Video
Can It Help You? |
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I thought you might find this article from Radio Sales Today, espousing the use of Online Video to increase Brand Awarenesss and Online Ad Awarness interesting. We have a number of Wizard Partners that can give you more insight on its pros and cons.
You'll find some of them at our next Wizards on the Road seminar in Richmond, Virginia -- September 23 & 24, 2009. Why don't you join us?
jane
Online Video Increasing
The Center For Media Research released findings that online video increases
advertising effectiveness.
Research released by Dynamic Logic reveals that ads integrated into the content of the
page are the most effective in driving online ad awareness and purchase intent.
Based on 2,390 online display campaigns that took place over the past three years, the
study found that half-banners and rectangles were more effective than ads that frame
the page such as leaderboards and skyscrapers.
The study went on to show rich media created the strongest brand impact.
Change in Brand Impact by Type of Format (% Delta vs. Fixed Frequency Level=1)
Delta Performance by Ad Format (* = No Significant Effect)
Brand Measurement Rich media w video Rich Media w/o Video Simple Flash
Aided brand awareness 1.9 0.9 0.4
Online ad awareness 2.6 2.1 2.2
Message association * 0.7 1.0
Brand favorability 2.3 0.5 *
Purchase intent 1.2 0.5 *
Source: Dynamic Logic MarketNorms, July 2009 (Numbers are % impact change vs. exposed control)
Included in the report, Dynamic Logic offers some guidelines for advertisers and agencies based on the findings:
• Try delivering a Rich Media with Video ad as the first ad exposure to addressable online audience.
• On a tight budget, select less expensive formats and consider frequency capping to extend reach.
• Factor media fees and rich media fees in together and optimize the most effective formats.
• For message association goals, consider adding the message to every frame of the ad for best results.
• For every branding goal studied, a different rich media format was better than Simple Flash at getting results.
(Source: The Center For Media Research, 09/01/09. Links: www.sears.com; www.arrivelounge.com)
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Product Integration
non traditional advertising becoming more the norm |
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Broadcast Network Execs: Expect More Integrated Campaigns This Upfront Season
CBS’ Tassler: Network in talks with Unilever to make more pacts like the Hellman’s, Bertolli ads
By Melissa Grego -- Broadcasting & Cable, 6/9/2009 8:46:49 PM MT
Few things are certain about this year’s upfront ad market, but one thing is for sure: There are likely to be more integrated product campaigns on the broadcast networks next season than ever.
That was the message from top broadcast network execs convened in Beverly Hills Tuesday for a panel during the ANA Alliance for Family Entertainment's (the advertising group formerly known as the Family Friendly Forum) fifth annual symposium.
CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler said the product integrations her network did with Unilever this season -- involving the company’s Hellman’s mayo product on New Adventures of Old Christine and Bertolli pasta throughout CBS’ Monday night comedy lineup -- was held up as a “gold standard” for how these deals should work. “We’re in talks about doing it again,” she said.
Unilever, which spends nearly $500 million annually on TV, has made efforts to switch up the upfront process by requesting media companies create campaigns around products rather than buying plain-old spots in TV schedules, according to AdAge.com. (Subscription required)
Fox Broadcasting Entertainment President Kevin Reilly said all of the networks have been increasingly involved in creating new ways of collaborating with sponsors and that “we are likely to see more as this upfront unfolds.”
ABC Primetime President Stephen McPherson concurs, saying “both sides [networks and advertisers] are getting more creative at it.”
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Looking Ahead
an article on the fragmentation of personal TV viewing |
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Change afoot among the TV set
Study: Nonbusiness online use surging with boomers
By Paul Bond
June 9, 2009, 11:05 PM ET
It's no secret that business professionals who are members of the baby boomer generation are constantly online for purposes related to work. Now, though, a sea change might be at hand: They're spending more downtime surfing the Internet than they are watching television.
Baby boomer professionals are spending 12.9 non-business hours each week surfing the Internet and 11.8 watching TV.
The data are based on a survey by ChangeWave Research of 1,660 business professionals ages 45-63. ChangeWave relies on a preselected "alliance" of 20,000 members from the business and investor class to identify trends early.
For its "Internet & TV Viewing Survey," director of research Paul Carton says the firm focused on baby boomers because "we wanted to look at a segment well-rooted in the traditional TV model."
It's too early to call any results of the survey a "trend," he says, because it's the first of its type. Comparing it with another one planned in about six months will be more informative. Still, "it's an interesting look at an industry in transformation," Carton says. "It reminds me of when broadband first started to take off and dial-up services like AOL were just swamped."
Some of the report's more interesting findings:
-- Fifty-one percent of respondents maintain profiles on social networking sites, with LinkedIn slightly more popular than Facebook. Classmates, Twitter and MySpace come in a distant third, fourth and fifth, respectively. As much as they like such sites, however, 77% said they would abandon them if a fee were attached.
-- Asked which subscription service they'd be most likely to give up, 44% of the group said cable and satellite TV. Home telephone service, at 23%, was second, followed by a DVD rental service (11%), Internet service (5%), newspaper (4%), magazines (3%), cell phone services (3%) and satellite radio (1%).
It's important to note, though, that the open-ended question was not restricted to those who subscribe to all of those services. Presumably, there were many who couldn't say they'd cancel a magazine subscription, for example, simply because they don't subscribe to a magazine to begin with.
Perhaps that's why, on the flip side, when ChangeWave asked which subscription they would be least likely to give up, TV fared better. Internet service was first, with 56% saying it would be the last they'd give up, followed by TV (23%) and cell phone (6%).
-- About 69% of those surveyed have watched online video during the past 90 days. Among those who answered in the affirmative, YouTube led the way with 79% having watched video there, followed by a TV network Web site (39%), Hulu (16%), iTunes (11%) and Netflix (9%).
A separate report from Bernstein Research on Tuesday, though, could offer proof that ChangeWave's panelists are, as advertised, ahead of the curve: Bernstein's analysts say the average person consumes only two minutes of online video a day, compared with 309 minutes of live TV.
ChangeWave also asked, "How many ads -- if any -- are you willing to view when you watch video through your computer?" Only 3% answered, "as many ads as with conventional broadcasting," and 47% said, "dramatically fewer."
-- Finally, possibly most disturbing to TV executives, 30% of those surveyed said they watch less TV now than they did a year ago, and only 6% watch more. The No. 1 reason for watching less, "I'm just less interested in what's on TV these days," was cited by 62% of respondents.
But 26%, the second-highest response, said they watch less TV because they surf the Internet more.
The survey also asked, "Over the next six months, how likely are you to downgrade or cancel your TV service package?" Twenty percent answered very or somewhat likely.
The survey, according to the report, "shows a powerful shift occurring among boomers away from traditional TV viewing toward new types of online services and entertainment. Moreover, the transformation has affected lifelong habits."
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