What you talkin' about, Twitter?

Everywhere you turn these days, people are asking "do you tweet?" With Tweeting being talked about everywhere from coffee shops and the halls of our government it seems to have formed into a social networking frenzy. And yet, while people think it's "hip"... they don't see the value in it. Nielsen Co. recently released this bit of research explaining that a whopping 60% of those who go to Twitter don't RETURN the following month.

Is this perhaps because consumers don't see how this is any different than the status updates on Myspace, Facebook, etc. Heck, even LinkedIN has status updates now.

To pull out some grandma research, the common complaint I hear from people who don't Tweet is that they already do that on other sites and in fact, that's the thing they HATE most about social networking... the inundation of status updates about stupid stuff.

Or is this simply a sign of younger generations being much more comfortable publishing themselves and older generations valuing privacy? Us digital marketers see that more and more consumers are turning to social networking, but need to be cognizant that there is a definite resistance to it as well and make marketing plans with that in mind.

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Social Networking Overload

Don't get me wrong... I have a plethora of social networks that I use... Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, (a rarely touched) Myspace, LinkedIn, etc, but I think at some point, digital entities have to ask themselves... "Do we really need to reinvent the wheel?"

Case in point - Yahoo looks to be trying to make their network more "social" soon. Here is a quick exerpt from the lengthy article:

In the next several months Yahoo will begin rolling out new versions of its most popular products, from Yahoo Mail to the Yahoo home page. A thread of social media features, including a common user profile, list of friends and regular updates about friends, will tie the family of Yahoo properties together.

When an individual recommends a news story from the Yahoo homepage, uploads a photograph on Flickr or makes a trade on a fantasy baseball team from Yahoo sports, Yahoo will send an alert to a network of friends or contacts.

While I totally have Yahoo IM and I've even participated in some of their groups, I have to pause and say... WHAT? I've spent months building up all of these other sites and now they're going to try and revolutionize the social network category by making me work outside of the platforms I've spent so much to build? Maybe it's because I'm not seeing the real life example, but I have to say the move has the early stink of OLD ideas - don't let the content be free range, instead work on putting up virtual walls. It will be interesting to see how this develops over the coming months.

Revitalizing Digital Display

It seems that digital display creative standards are on a pendulum...

• beginning of display - creative tried to distract from content (blinking, crawling over content, etc)
  
• the last couple of years - publishers pushed back and said that an annoyed customer meant a customer who left their site
• within the last few months though - publishers are starting to open themselves back up to big, bold creative
  

With this change, I have to ask... "yeah, but will they even see that rich media ad?" I've been hoping to see some traction on measuring time/exposure and last week I sat down with an ad network that had tested various models such as only charging if the ad had been seen by one user for 1-2 minutes during the course of the campaign. I asked why that model didn't stick -- "CPMs were in the pennies that way."

Surely there is some middle ground that generate revenue for the sites and helps digital ads stand out more.

Part of the issue is that we've accepted the focus on the short term measurements and we're less concerned branding and long-term intention drivers. I think the following could help us look at the branding impact (beyond pre- and post-wave studies) :

• Sites could stand to be more open to product integration. I know, I know... this is church and state in the traditional world, but digital blurs the line between user generated content and site generated content. I'd love to see the same courtesy extended to advertisers.
• Ad units need to be able to "read" if the user can see the full ad in their screen in order for it be counted as an impression.
  
• I get WHY sound isn't allowed on most sites, but doesn't this seem odd to anyone else? TV and radio have the ability to pull you in with sound even if you're driving or in another room. Would it not make sense that one ad on the digital page could have sound to help pull users into their message?
• It's been raised by others in the industry, but I'd love to see one ad unit per page-- perhaps the ad could even follow you as you scroll down the page?
  

The responsibility doesn't just lie with sites/networks...

• Media Planners/Buyers need to push for more information.
  
• Agencies need to take the time to tailor ads to fit the various needs of the consumer-- not just based on their mindset, but also based on their "in the moment" surfing habits.
  
• Creative needs to think beyond telling a story to creating long-term bonds with its consumers.

Thankfully, IAB has finally tried to take on this long-standing concern and will hopefully help turn many individual voices into a discussion that can yield results.

Last Click

I applaud Abbey Klaassen and other digital columnists for continuing to push marketers to think beyond the last click. This notion isn't really NEW news-- we've seen digital advertising analytic companies jump on this for at least a year. However, one thing I seem to be seeing over and over again is that cetain web site analytic companies (Google Analytics namely), seem to hold near and dear to the "There is one true click" mentality/reporting.

As much as we'd like for digital to either branding or DR, it becomes clearer and clearer to me that digital advertising still holds many of the principles of traditional advertising. While this medium is certainly more complex as you're likely leading them down a more defined path, its not always best to define the medium solely by the measurement tools that aren't always perfect.

TG Madison has found that it's best to use a mix of advertising and site analytic tools to help look at the campaign from at least two perspectives. Additionally, it's helpful to use branding surveys to see what impact the digital campaign had even if it didn't drive an immediate action.

Interested in learning more? Please contact me.

Digital Ad Impact

So I've been reading a bit here lately about what is being called a problem for digital advertising - why consumer's can't recall online advertising.

Obviously, I'm in the industry and while I can call some creative that I've liked... I've got plenty more examples from other media. So should digital advertising consider more impactful ad units, i.e. - one ad unit per page?

I like the idea, but something seems odd to me. I grew up in a time when people freaked over how certain songs sounded when you played them backwards. Have we lost the idea that working into someone's subconscious is just as desirable as making them sing our jingle?

Hey don't get me wrong, I totally agree that it's absolutely silly to think that someone who doesn't even scroll down enough to see the ad is anything but a wasted impression. But just because I didn't play the ad's game or clicked the ad, does it mean I wasn't impacted?

Instead, I think the larger problem is two fold

For awareness driven campaigns, it's often difficult for consumers to understand what the ad wants you to takeaway. The pages which are usually targeted for awareness campaigns often aren't pages that people rest on for more than mere seconds. Off the top of my head, two ideas come to mind:

• Create simple, 5-second ads for these types of ads
• Push publishers to retarget users who only saw part of the message until they are given time to digest the message

Completely opposite of that, is trying to tell the consumer a story and trying to get them to perform an action (AKA DR). Over and over again, we find that contextually relevant conversation and content is the best area to get someone to perform an action. Here is where it's easier to get someone to get into your message... because you're relevant to what they want to find.

Display often gets a lot of knocks but when you think of it as a process instead of an instantaneous push, it's much easier to create a successful campaign.