Sunday, February 14, 2010

Don't Worry Guys. Big O's Got You.

From Bill Kristol in regards to how he does NOT begrudge the giant bonuses taken by Lloyd Blankfein (CEO Goldman), and Jamie Dimon (CEO JP Morgan Chase).

doesn't Obama realize how creepy this statement is? "I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen." This confirms the suspicion that we now live in a world of crony capitalism, where if Obama knows and thinks well of you, then you don't get criticized--but if you're some guy who hasn't spent a lot of time cozying up to government leaders, then you could easily be the object of demagogic assault by politicians.

Does everyone remember the outrage that Auto CEO's didn't fly coach to Washington?

IMO... its reasons like this that we need to rely on the free market and not the government for pretty much everything.

Please Watch This Before You Pitch Me Video Overlays

That means you Video Egg and YouTube

Friday, January 29, 2010

Debbie Downer


Blog post from the head of IAB http://bit.ly/v0Pz

There’s clearly an agenda but its insightful. Mostly its a lot of detail around how new products like the iPad make advertising in them a pain in the ass.

But The last line is “To the degree that the walled gardens create impediments to scale, publishers need to find other sources of revenue. Media companies must redouble their efforts to add marketing services to their sets of offerings.”

In the past we’ve heard Google and other media co’s are a threat to ad agencies. Here’s one reason that might be true.

  • Creating digital ads for lots of different places is complex and inefficient
  • Competition between publishers prevents them from standardizing their protocols as they outdo each other and thus limits digital media’s value to companies
  • If it costs publishers more to create their digital content than they can get selling ads against it (because of the limited value/scale) you need to find more ways to make money
  • Charging for content is one way (and likely unpopular with consumers), developing advertising directly with our clients (and incorporating our fee’s into their business model) is another
I think agencies need to think about how they walk the tricky line between innovation and standardization.


Have a great weekend

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Quit Fussing About Behavioral Targeting

Recently I was asked my opinion on this article by Jeff Einstein.

He attempts to slay the practice of behavioral targeting. He attacks the practice from a variety of angles. I find most of the those angles irrelevant.

1. Consumers don’t WANT to be served relevant ads.

Consumers don’t want to be served ads at all. They also want to free BMWs and houses made of ice cream. Stuff costs money. Free content, tools, and games costs ads. Starting with that as a given, and the choice of a relevant ad or an irrelevant ad, I’m confident that consumers prefer relevance.

2. The CTRs are low.

All clicks measure is a way to see how well you are effecting people open to engaging with your brand at that very moment. Not all advertising can make everyone you want to reach, jump out of their seat and act. You should aim for that and if you have a dollar and the choice between a tactic that will make everyone do that and behavioral targeting, choose the former. But once you spent all those dollars, and still want to change how people feel about your brand, BT is one of several tools in the box.

3. You risk breaking the law.

There is no law. There might one day be a law. When there is one we will follow it. Most of your deepest darkest secrets are bad targeting criteria. And using that data would probably be a moral and major PR problem, but not yet a legal one. Knowing whether or not someone might be in the market for snow tires doesn't require that kind of information.

BT is NOT Spam. We are taking ads people were going to see anyway and making them more relevant.

4. You drain budget

I doubt any advertising budget is higher or lower based on the existence and use of behavioral targeting. Perhaps digital budgets are. But digital budgets are dumb. Marketing budgets is where the allocation should begin. Put the money in the place where it makes the most sense. There are often better places (many better places) to put that money than in behavioral targeted banners, but your marketing teams should have strategic conversations around that, and wrestle with that on a day to day basis.

His last point does make sense

"Much better instead to reinvest your time and money in the fundamentals of a good message and better online destination experiences. Challenge your agency to explore and learn how -- in an on-demand media universe -- to let your audience target you."

With that I agree. At least I would if my business was building online destinations like his probably does. Objectively I'd invest in brand experiences wherever they may live, social networks, mobile phones, the middle of Times Square. But I digress...

A good message and awesome brand experiences are way more important than any of this nonsense. They need to well funded. But there are lots of territories to fill in a marketing plan, once your done creating awesome experiences, and all the people that can find you, find you. Sometimes you still have more product demand you need to drive.

As I've said on many occasions 200 million Americans are going to eat ketchup this month, you can build the best ketchup game in the history of the world, no more than 5% of them will play it and you got a lot more ketchup to sell.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

It's Saturday @ Noon


And this is the best damn team in the media business

Thursday, May 28, 2009

And Now A Few Words From the Boss


So I learned 2 things from these videos. 1) Utah is a bad place to kill people. B) I'm pretty fortunate I found this place.

How "Just Do It" came to be


How Wieden + Kennedy is Different From Your Ad Agency

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

Protect Our Precious Bodily Fluids

The Russians have invested in Facebook

We must protect our precious bodily fluids. I'm not saying Facebook should avoid them entirely, but they should deny them their essence.