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August 28, 2006
When Posters Aren't Paper
Today’s Wall Street Journal article “Technology Boosts Outdoor Ads” addresses the second-fastest growing form of advertising spending behind the internet, outdoor advertising. The article is mainly devoted new technology just being deployed in the London Tube developed by 3M that has allowed them display “glueless [paper] posters” which can be put up and taken down more easily and cheaply.
But behind that story is another one of CBS’s winning bid for the Tube to include 150 digital projectors and 2000 video screens in its stations. When outdoor posters become digital signage, we’re taking the first step towards a world in which all screens, including billboards/posters, are connected internet devices.
This BBC article from last week cites the promise of digital signage, “If you believe some agencies, anything that is currently paper and paste is going to become video.” The potential is not just about just about grabbing attention more than ordinary posters would. But rather, it’s about bringing the benefits of digital advertising found on the desktop web to become an “everywhere web.” Those benefits include tracking metrics, day parting, and location-specific messages. Spencer Kelly writes, “A fast food chain can advertise either breakfast, lunch, or dinner. A newspaper may only want to advertise in the morning, a bar only in the evening.” And then there’s the promise of interactivity; once we have a connected screens, the next logical step is to allow consumers to control and engage with them.
But even the strongest pundits are still singing caution about how soon all of this will happen, however. James Davies of out-of-home communications agency Posterscope has said:
"Everybody cites Minority Report and Blade Runner as the future of out-of-home-advertising, and that's a big exaggeration. We're not going to see screens on every single street corner over the next few years, mainly because of costs… these are very expensive forms of technology.”
Indeed, while the technology is becoming available and we can clearly see the potential, it will still take time for adoption on three fronts - consumers, advertisers, and real estate – for this new medium. The agencies and technology vendors pushing this new frontier will have to be patient as it emerges, but it’s very interesting to watch nonetheless.
August 23, 2006
Watching It All: Integrated Multidevice Media Experiences
I was surprised by one fact I read earlier this week in my daily Jack Myers Business Report e-mail subscription, an article titled Myers Emotional Connections Study on Brand Value of TV Programs & Networks. It stated that “sixty percent of adults acknowledge visiting the websites of TV shows while they are watching the shows.” My astonishment was not that people use their television and computer concurrently, but that there are that many people already doing it. It seems that we have really have turned the corner towards an era of integrated multidevice media experiences. With people (especially younger demographics) utilizing more than one media device concurrently, it’s only natural that programming originating on one device will extend into other devices that people are using. We’ve seen an increasing number of multidevice content programming over the past year, and integrated television and online is only one part of the story. Of course, everyone remembers 41M people voted for the American Idol winner this past May via SMS on their mobile device. Some would argue that these examples are really just a manifestation of the limitations of television – its lack of interactivity – but I would contend that multidevice experiences are here to stay as media consumer attention is increasingly spread across numerous digital outlets. In addition, some one-screen-to-many experiences like digitial signage and stadium jumbotrons necessitate numerous input devices for a multitude of simultaneous users.
Regardless, these experiences result in higher consumer involvement with the content than a traditional linear (or even one-device online/mobile) experience. And if that’s true for the programming itself, then marketers cannot be far behind. With advertisers talking about engagement and struggling to find it when consumers have divided attention spans, it seems natural that marketing campaigns will follow the same format. If you can’t beat ‘em, then join ‘em, and the sooner the better. Today’s inFocus iMedia article provides a good set of tactical tips for advertisers who are employing an intergrated television and online campaign. As people pay attention to an increasing number of devices, they are in greater control of what they view, but it’s only natural that both the content and advertising will extend with their consumption habits.
August 18, 2006
The Meaning of Badge Proliferation
It seems that the number of conversations I have had in the past two months and the number of articles/blog-posts I’ve read about online badges has skyrocketed. By “badges” I mean small snippets of HTML code which consumers cut and then paste onto their blog or social network profile. (I am not necessarily talking about “widgets,” which contain richer interactive functionality and often reside on the desktop, though I do realize that the definitions and manifestations of the two blur together quite a bit.)
For example, Fred Wilson posted last month about his “new blog bling.” The number of badges has exploded so much recently in that Pete Cashmore asked earlier this week, “Are there any startups that don’t plug in to MySpace these days?”. The importance of for the industry of badges and widgets for MySpace pages was highlighted with the recent scramble after the mandate that all Flash-based ones be upgraded to newest version from Adobe.
Tim Post coined a very apt term, calling these badges, the “flying seeds of the internet” and has an excellent blog entirely devoted to the subject (it’s a must read on the subject which I’ve poured through extensively). In a conversation he and I had the other day, we discussed how badges are a unique combination of marketing and technology, like interactive stickers for the web. They are becoming another method for self-expression in and of themselves. Bumper stickers for the internet generation to communicate to others in “traffic.”
Just like those sticky pieces of paper slapped on the back of a car, online badges can and will allow people to express affiliations with schools, groups, locations, brands, bands, and much more. But unlike static stickers, online badges (like those created by Badgr) possess the ability to be personalized. And they’re not just for people – Brian Phipps has an interesting post about “widgets as brand pipelines,” which can easily be applied to badges as well.
Beyond the above affiliations, badges have the capability to communicate about individuals’ relationships with products. As many long-time readers of my blog know, I have a keen interest in “social commerce” sites (see a post from last December), as I have a vision where they could provide consumers with rich social context and relevancy to the purchases which they are making. The current crop of social shopping sites are experimenting with badges as a way to promote their service. StyleFeeder, Wists, Nabbr, Kaboodle, Sprout Commerce (the creators of MyPickList and FavoriteThingz), and StyleHive - just to name a few - give consumers the ability to express themselves via products in various ways. It’s a very powerful notion, especially as it introduces the notion of monetizing these badges as forms of advertising. It remains to be seen, however, if any of these services can attract significant enough consumer adoption.
Resulting from my recent exploration, there are two questions which I am currently contemplating and learning about:
1. What are the best practices for marketers to harness the power of these badges to promote services, brand, or products?
2. What are the business models for the services that enable and create these badges? Or are they just another marketing tactic for services as opposed to something to develop a business around? Are they a means to an end or an end in and of themselves?
Posted by at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (3)
August 8, 2006
Thinking About Online Video (Part II): How Long Will it Go?
The explosion of online video content this year has primarily consisted of user-generated video shorts, led by the phenomenon of YouTube and other social video sharing sites. In a post two weeks ago, I explored the question of how far online video content will be syndicated.
Another question on my mind, however, is as this medium progresses, how long the will the videos we consume online be? Surfing around YouTube reminds me of watching America’s Funniest Home Videos fifteen years ago. Both venues largely consist(ed) of very short clips shot on a home camera which provoke amusement and/or laughter. And like YouTube, AFHV was also a sensation in its own time – remember, in March of 1990 it had become the number one ranked television series, temporarily unseating CBS's 60 Minutes. But all television content did not transform into an AFHV clone.
Likewise, YouTube is a successful pioneer, but perhaps not the perfect model for what is to come. I think that the content on that site is appropriate for what the subject matter is – funny shorts are funny shorts. However, I wonder – what about meaningful video content? Aren’t 30 second clips going to lost their novelty? Less than two years after the height of America’s Funniest Home Videos, in 1992 MTV aired its first season of the Real World, which provided viewers a storyline around these “real” people interacting with the world. We then saw much of the next decade of primetime slowly become engulfed with reality television with varying degrees of length to the “episodes.”
With perhaps a bit less fanfare over the past year, large media companies have (reluctantly) released some of their longer-form content online. As just an example, the relaunch of AOL Video last week includes access to many forms of produced longer-form pieces. Additionally, MSN has suggested that it will partially differentiate its upcoming video offering with longer-format content.
Yet producing longer-form content isn’t just available to media conglomerates. There are an increasing number of simple online tools available (like Jumpcut and Eyespot) for even non-tech savvy consumers to reach beyond simple clips themselves and produce meaningful videos complete with storylines.
Because of the datapoints above, I don’t doubt that video will be available online in longer formats. However, people will have an increasing option to consume content in a length that pleases them. The real question is whether people will want to watch longer segments online. I’ve heard anecdotally that people just aren’t fully watching all the way through long-form content pieces which are available now (even when controlling for those who drop off in the first minute who were really just “previewing” the content). Will that change over time as people become more comfortable with passively viewing a longer piece? Or perhaps there is something inherent about the laptop screen vs. a television that makes it less appropriate for long-form content (the lean-in vs. lean-back discussion).
How long will online video go? Ultimately, it all depends on what consumers want.
August 1, 2006
Frameworking Changes in Consumer Behavior
Can consumer behavior be changed? Of course. Is it easy to do? Not at all.
As a general reaction, I’ve found that when VCs and other non-marketing business people look at consumer-facing services offered by new startups, they often fall into one of two polar camps:
1. Overly skeptical about the ability to facilitate the adoption of a new service whatsoever. “It’s too tough to change consumer behavior” is a mantra which I’ve heard numerous times.
2. Overly positive about the chances for the adoption of a new service based on a small dataset of reactions from familiar people (like their own, their families, or the early adopter / techie TechCrunch crowd).
Of course, healthy skepticism should be applied to all new endeavors (especially those with a consumer angle), and someone’s own gut is always a strong datapoint. However, over-generalizing in either direction leaves little opportunity to discover interesting opportunities which will be successful. All consumer-facing services change behavior, at least slightly, by definition. The key is to understand the context of this modification.
So in looking at consumer-facing companies I try to place a framework around evaluating the willingness of people to adopt a new service. To me there are fundamentally two levers:
1. The nature of the steps which deviate from existing behavior. The two primary questions are determining how many steps consumers must take in adopting a new service and how incrementally different those steps are from current behavior. I’ve written in the past that the friction between desired consumer actions is multiplicative; in other words, the more difficult it is to progress from one step to the next, the likelihood of a consumer completing this progression compounds.
2. The visibility of the value of taking those steps for the target consumers. Of course, there has to be value for the consumers to take each individual step towards fully adopting a new service. But it goes beyond what the true value of the service is to the end-user. In reality, adoption is driven by what s/he perceives the benefit of taking each individual next step in the process. And evaluation should be around consumers in the target market of the service, not the founder’s, VC’s, early adopters’, or other constituent’s mindset.
An interesting example is contrasting the adoption of TiVo and YouTube after their introduction – two different ways that consumers could (and now do) watch video vs. “traditional television.” First, TiVo users had to make a huge leap of purchasing an expensive item with a subscription fee. And while already adopted users sang the praises of the service, those who hadn’t already had a difficult idea perceiving those benefits because they were nebulously communicated. By contrast, YouTube users were already online and comfortable with accessing photos and text in its respective forum. (Once the barrier of adequate bandwidth had fallen,) the ability for users to experiment with watching one video or even uploading a video was relatively low. While this comparison is perhaps an oversimplification, looking at these cases through the above lens does provide some perspective about the number of years it took / is taking for these services to become adopted.
At the end of the day, my point is not to promote the above framework as a specific tool. Rather, my message here is that consumers are just like any other business’s customers – they have a set of needs and preferences, and we can apply analytical thinking around their potential behavior beyond just our gut feel. It’s difficult to separate our own feelings when we ourselves could be a possible customer. In reality, we’re only one among a market of (hopefully) millions.