The Internet was always fast. Google made a point during its rise to prominence to detail -- to the millisecond -- just how quickly it delivered a search result. And, as we all know, the Web has gotten even faster.
Real-time communications channels like Twitter are pushing the Internet into "real time," where communication and information flow nonstop. This presents advertisers with a dizzying array of opportunities -- and a daunting number of challenges.
Marketers "are built like battleships for long, sustained warfare, [but] this is guerrilla warfare," said Lisa Bradner, a senior analyst at Forrester Research.
One of the most intense challenges is the new speed with which messages need to be crafted. Think of display advertising, which is in the doldrums thanks to a nearly limitless supply of space outstripping ad demand. With a large chunk of the market transitioning to a marketplace-driven dynamic where advertisers, networks and agencies bid on ad placements based on people, not pages, a message -- and its permutations -- increasingly needs to be made on the fly. And this, in turn, means extra work up front.
HP, for instance, using tools from Yahoo and Tumri, recently ran a campaign with more than 20,000 ad permutations. To do this, said Catherine Paschkewitz, director of demand generation, HP Direct, "you need to take the time to think of your testing framework and the different things you want to test. It's having an up-front process as you're launching and refreshing campaigns."
Another way to make display ads more real time is to use live video. Visa, for instance, ran live video in banner ads earlier this year that showed scenes from cities worldwide. Last month, Intel embedded live chat in its banners. Earlier this month, GE CEO Jeff Immelt delivered a Webcast address on healthcare issues live in a banner ad on top sites. And Volvo and Intuit have piped Twitter into ad units.
Another challenge for brands is that consumers now expect instant gratification when it comes to customer service, which is why marketers like Apple, Bank of America and Overstock.com now provide live customer service on their sites. Kevin Kohn, evp of marketing at LivePerson, which worked with BoA and Overstock, said this is nearly a requirement in a real-time world.
(You can read more at http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3i15f4e2b3b4a487b3b5cd5347ebd07cbf)
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label internet. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
Current Puts RFP Call on Twitter
Every day brings new uses for Twitter. Now, the short-messaging service has found its way into the agency-selection process.
The Current Network today became the first brand to solicit agencies via Twitter to receive RFPs for its account review. "This is a TwitteRFP for The Current Network. Searching for a full service ad agency partner," wrote Jordan Kretchmer, vp of brand at Current.
In a longer posting linked from the initial tweet, he explained the type of agency Current is seeking:
"Our ideal agency will help us formulate a brand/ad strategy that communicates who Current is through compelling, inspiring, and even controversial advertising. The ideal relationship for us is based on collaboration, dialogue, and a reciprocal excitement for the potential that Current has to attract a mass audience."
In an attempt to open the opaque RFP process, agencies are instructed to post their responses publicly.
Kretchmer said he hatched the idea earlier this week as a way to fill out the roster of shops Current will evaluate. He already has chosen five agencies to receive RFPs separately from Twitter.
"The whole idea is searching for an agency...that lives and breathes social media rather than claiming they do," he said.
So far, Kretchmer has gotten dozens of responses. Most are from small shops and include little more than an expression of interest. One to One Interactive, a Boston agency, went the farthest, putting together a video linked to in a reply to the "TwitteRFP."
Many of the responses have come from small creative firms that Kretchmer -- who worked at Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners before joining Current -- did not know.
"This is not a stunt at all," Kretchmer said. "I'm short-listing people with interesting responses."
At the very least, it's made the often-tiresome RFP process more intriguing, Kretchmer said. At Butler, Shine and earlier at Mullen, he often chafed at the formulaic nature of the mating dance between agencies and potential clients. "While this may not get us any different work at the end, the approach is much more fun," he said.
Shops have until Monday to respond to Kretchmer's call by replying to him using @jkretch. Kretchmer declined to state the size of the account. Current plans to have an agency chosen by June. Current has no agency relationship at present.
[the article was originally published at http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3ic65aba1d643fc23caaf0f251ba580cbc]
The Current Network today became the first brand to solicit agencies via Twitter to receive RFPs for its account review. "This is a TwitteRFP for The Current Network. Searching for a full service ad agency partner," wrote Jordan Kretchmer, vp of brand at Current.
In a longer posting linked from the initial tweet, he explained the type of agency Current is seeking:
"Our ideal agency will help us formulate a brand/ad strategy that communicates who Current is through compelling, inspiring, and even controversial advertising. The ideal relationship for us is based on collaboration, dialogue, and a reciprocal excitement for the potential that Current has to attract a mass audience."
In an attempt to open the opaque RFP process, agencies are instructed to post their responses publicly.
Kretchmer said he hatched the idea earlier this week as a way to fill out the roster of shops Current will evaluate. He already has chosen five agencies to receive RFPs separately from Twitter.
"The whole idea is searching for an agency...that lives and breathes social media rather than claiming they do," he said.
So far, Kretchmer has gotten dozens of responses. Most are from small shops and include little more than an expression of interest. One to One Interactive, a Boston agency, went the farthest, putting together a video linked to in a reply to the "TwitteRFP."
Many of the responses have come from small creative firms that Kretchmer -- who worked at Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners before joining Current -- did not know.
"This is not a stunt at all," Kretchmer said. "I'm short-listing people with interesting responses."
At the very least, it's made the often-tiresome RFP process more intriguing, Kretchmer said. At Butler, Shine and earlier at Mullen, he often chafed at the formulaic nature of the mating dance between agencies and potential clients. "While this may not get us any different work at the end, the approach is much more fun," he said.
Shops have until Monday to respond to Kretchmer's call by replying to him using @jkretch. Kretchmer declined to state the size of the account. Current plans to have an agency chosen by June. Current has no agency relationship at present.
[the article was originally published at http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/digital/e3ic65aba1d643fc23caaf0f251ba580cbc]
Monday, April 20, 2009
Microsoft: The Internet Needs More Trust for growth
The Internet needs to be more trustworthy if it wants to grow, according to Microsoft's senior security executive, Scott Charney.
In a video posted to Microsoft's Web site ahead of Charney's keynote at next week's RSA security conference, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Trustworthy Computing described how anonymity on the Internet is increasingly being exploited by cyber criminals. "We need to push back on anonymity and lack of traceability," he said.
"Because the Internet can be anonymous and untraceable, criminals flock to the Internet," Charney explained. "Today too many people do not know what software is running on their machine and often they have malware. They often don't know who they're communicating with, whether an e-mail they've received is spoofed or from some unknown sender even when it appears to come from someone they know. When they visit Web sites, they don't know if that Web site is to be trusted or not."
"For all of these reasons we need End-to-End Trust," Charney said.
End-to-End Trust is a security marketing initiative introduced by Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie at last year's RSA conference. Keynoting next Tuesday, Charney is expected to give an update on the initiative, which the company has thusfar billed as an effort to engage industry, consumers and policy makers in a serious discussion of online security problems. His video was posted this week on a revamped version of Microsoft's End-to-End Trust Web site.
As the world's dominant supplier of software, Microsoft is constantly in the crosshairs of attackers. Even as the company has taken steps to lock down its flagship Windows operating system, hackers have exploited countless flaws in the programs that run on top of it, such as Office and Internet Explorer.
Microsoft would like to give its users a better idea of whether a Web site or e-mail attachment is trustworthy. But how you identify people on the Internet without raising serious privacy concerns? It's a problem that Microsoft hopes to solve first by engaging in discussion.
"We've been talking about this since last year, spending a lot of time with the policy makers," said Doug Leland, general manager of Microsoft's Identity and Security Business Group, in an interview. "This is an agenda we're trying to advance with the reset of the industry and with policy makers and lawmakers and law enforcement as a proposal of a solution to tackle a very significant problem."
Last September, for example, Microsoft made a submission to the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, a group looking at ways to improve online safety for children. Microsoft's paper (pdf) advocated the replacement of Web user names and passwords with Information Card systems, such as Microsoft's own CardSpace technology, and calling on a collaboration between government, industry and child development experts to solve the problem.
Microsoft has been working with a number of countries, including Singapore, Belgium, the U.K. and France to develop government-issued digital credentials, Leland said.
In his video, Charney called for a "model where people get in-person proof and then can pass digital identities on the Internet. So, for example, if you got a drivers license or a passport and it also had a digital certificate on it, you could later pass your identity to a site along with your credit card number for example and they would know you are who you claim to be."
But Microsoft doesn't think these digital IDs should be mandatory.
In December, Charney sent a letter to the Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Roy Cooper of North Carolina arguing that any move toward mandatory digital IDs "would not only compromise privacy but would have a chilling effect on other important social values such as freedom of expression."
Instead of centralized digital IDs, Microsoft is pushing a concept known as federated identity, where different organizations develop ways to share and trust identity information about their users. With CardSpace, Microsoft has been careful to give users the ability to decide what information they want to share.
"The way in which Microsoft has been thinking about it has been very constructive," said John Palfrey, a co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center, which published the Internet Safety Task Force report. "They would leave all or virtually all of the decision making in the hand of the users."
Charney's RSA keynote, entitled "End to End Trust: A Collaborative Effort" is set to be delivered Tuesday morning. RSA runs at San Francisco's Moscone Center from Monday to Friday next week.
[read more : http://www.pcworld.com/article/163311/microsoft_the_internet_needs_more_trust_to_grow.html?tk=rss_news]
In a video posted to Microsoft's Web site ahead of Charney's keynote at next week's RSA security conference, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Trustworthy Computing described how anonymity on the Internet is increasingly being exploited by cyber criminals. "We need to push back on anonymity and lack of traceability," he said.
"Because the Internet can be anonymous and untraceable, criminals flock to the Internet," Charney explained. "Today too many people do not know what software is running on their machine and often they have malware. They often don't know who they're communicating with, whether an e-mail they've received is spoofed or from some unknown sender even when it appears to come from someone they know. When they visit Web sites, they don't know if that Web site is to be trusted or not."
"For all of these reasons we need End-to-End Trust," Charney said.
End-to-End Trust is a security marketing initiative introduced by Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie at last year's RSA conference. Keynoting next Tuesday, Charney is expected to give an update on the initiative, which the company has thusfar billed as an effort to engage industry, consumers and policy makers in a serious discussion of online security problems. His video was posted this week on a revamped version of Microsoft's End-to-End Trust Web site.
As the world's dominant supplier of software, Microsoft is constantly in the crosshairs of attackers. Even as the company has taken steps to lock down its flagship Windows operating system, hackers have exploited countless flaws in the programs that run on top of it, such as Office and Internet Explorer.
Microsoft would like to give its users a better idea of whether a Web site or e-mail attachment is trustworthy. But how you identify people on the Internet without raising serious privacy concerns? It's a problem that Microsoft hopes to solve first by engaging in discussion.
"We've been talking about this since last year, spending a lot of time with the policy makers," said Doug Leland, general manager of Microsoft's Identity and Security Business Group, in an interview. "This is an agenda we're trying to advance with the reset of the industry and with policy makers and lawmakers and law enforcement as a proposal of a solution to tackle a very significant problem."
Last September, for example, Microsoft made a submission to the Internet Safety Technical Task Force, a group looking at ways to improve online safety for children. Microsoft's paper (pdf) advocated the replacement of Web user names and passwords with Information Card systems, such as Microsoft's own CardSpace technology, and calling on a collaboration between government, industry and child development experts to solve the problem.
Microsoft has been working with a number of countries, including Singapore, Belgium, the U.K. and France to develop government-issued digital credentials, Leland said.
In his video, Charney called for a "model where people get in-person proof and then can pass digital identities on the Internet. So, for example, if you got a drivers license or a passport and it also had a digital certificate on it, you could later pass your identity to a site along with your credit card number for example and they would know you are who you claim to be."
But Microsoft doesn't think these digital IDs should be mandatory.
In December, Charney sent a letter to the Attorney General Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Roy Cooper of North Carolina arguing that any move toward mandatory digital IDs "would not only compromise privacy but would have a chilling effect on other important social values such as freedom of expression."
Instead of centralized digital IDs, Microsoft is pushing a concept known as federated identity, where different organizations develop ways to share and trust identity information about their users. With CardSpace, Microsoft has been careful to give users the ability to decide what information they want to share.
"The way in which Microsoft has been thinking about it has been very constructive," said John Palfrey, a co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center, which published the Internet Safety Task Force report. "They would leave all or virtually all of the decision making in the hand of the users."
Charney's RSA keynote, entitled "End to End Trust: A Collaborative Effort" is set to be delivered Tuesday morning. RSA runs at San Francisco's Moscone Center from Monday to Friday next week.
[read more : http://www.pcworld.com/article/163311/microsoft_the_internet_needs_more_trust_to_grow.html?tk=rss_news]
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Time to Buy TV, Radio, and Internet Ads?
These days, you don't have to be an insomniac to come across television commercials for products like the "Snuggie" or "ShamWow." With advertising dollars scarce and large corporations cutting back on their marketing efforts, smaller businesses are reaping the benefits of significantly lower rates for ad buys they may have once thought were out of reach.
Prime-time TV slots are going for a 25% less than they sold for just last year, says Steve Cox, spokesperson for the Better Business Bureau. "The playing field for TV advertising is becoming more level, and small business owners can now take advantage of steep discounts for prime slots, as well as cut rates from PR firms and productions companies," he says.
J. T. Hroncich, managing director and principal of Capitol Media Solutions, a full-service advertising agency in Washington, says advertising rates are more negotiable than ever. "Before, some of these media companies didn't do business with firms with smaller budgets, but it's very easy to negotiate now with Web sites, television, and radio," he says.
More Eyeballs
In addition to more flexible rates, small businesses can get more bang for their ad bucks today because viewership is up, Hroncich says. "People aren't going out as much; they're staying home watching TV or looking at the Internet. So these venues are getting more impressions but they're charging less money" for their ads, he says.
But it's not always easy to persuade smaller firms to try new ad buys. "Companies like to stick with what they know best, but we're trying to get them to branch out and try electronic or interactive ads. If they even take 10% to 20% of their ad budgets and use that to see what results they can get with broadcast or Internet, they're liking these options they weren't able to get 6, 9, or 12 months ago when prices would have been double," Hroncich says.
Cox advises small companies to identify customer demographics when deciding where to advertise, rather than being biased by their own viewing habits. Advertising slots that have the most cost-effective reach may be on niche cable TV programming that reaches a particular geographic area or target audience, he says.
And while large corporations have budgets that allow them to run ads simply reinforcing their brands, small business ads should get viewers off the couch. "Small businesses need to have their phones ring or orders coming in at their Web sites" in order to determine that an advertisement is successful, Hroncich says.
They're Prepared to Haggle
Smaller firms do not have to spend a fortune on production costs for broadcast advertising, he says. And many media companies today are willing to take spots on a test basis, rather than lock advertisers in to six-month or one-year commitments as they have in the past. "These companies are looking to survive, so they're willing to do short-term campaigns without minimums, at discounted rates," Hroncich says.
A small company can contract with a freelance graphic artist or video production company to design its ads or hire an advertising firm to do both the design and placement of the ad campaigns. In some cases, Cox says, the media outlet will work with advertisers to produce the spots.
Entrepreneurs should be prepared to haggle over pricing, he says, being aware that it's better to run more spots at a less desirable time than to blow their ad budgets on one prime-time slot.
Hroncich says that businesses can get a week's worth of oft-repeated radio spots for $1,500 in many markets: "You'll either see results immediately or you won't, so you can see how it goes. Your rates may go up later, but by then you'll know if it's worth it."
Similarly, he suggests that his smaller clients try month-long banner ads on targeted Web sites or week-long ads on cable television. "Cable is cheap as opposed to broadcast TV and the cable viewers will be local. It may cost $1,000 to $2,500 to produce a cable advertisement, and you could air it for $25 or $50 a spot, depending on what time of day and what shows you're looking at," Hroncich says.
[credit : http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/apr2009/sb20090414_800224.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_top+stories]
Prime-time TV slots are going for a 25% less than they sold for just last year, says Steve Cox, spokesperson for the Better Business Bureau. "The playing field for TV advertising is becoming more level, and small business owners can now take advantage of steep discounts for prime slots, as well as cut rates from PR firms and productions companies," he says.
J. T. Hroncich, managing director and principal of Capitol Media Solutions, a full-service advertising agency in Washington, says advertising rates are more negotiable than ever. "Before, some of these media companies didn't do business with firms with smaller budgets, but it's very easy to negotiate now with Web sites, television, and radio," he says.
More Eyeballs
In addition to more flexible rates, small businesses can get more bang for their ad bucks today because viewership is up, Hroncich says. "People aren't going out as much; they're staying home watching TV or looking at the Internet. So these venues are getting more impressions but they're charging less money" for their ads, he says.
But it's not always easy to persuade smaller firms to try new ad buys. "Companies like to stick with what they know best, but we're trying to get them to branch out and try electronic or interactive ads. If they even take 10% to 20% of their ad budgets and use that to see what results they can get with broadcast or Internet, they're liking these options they weren't able to get 6, 9, or 12 months ago when prices would have been double," Hroncich says.
Cox advises small companies to identify customer demographics when deciding where to advertise, rather than being biased by their own viewing habits. Advertising slots that have the most cost-effective reach may be on niche cable TV programming that reaches a particular geographic area or target audience, he says.
And while large corporations have budgets that allow them to run ads simply reinforcing their brands, small business ads should get viewers off the couch. "Small businesses need to have their phones ring or orders coming in at their Web sites" in order to determine that an advertisement is successful, Hroncich says.
They're Prepared to Haggle
Smaller firms do not have to spend a fortune on production costs for broadcast advertising, he says. And many media companies today are willing to take spots on a test basis, rather than lock advertisers in to six-month or one-year commitments as they have in the past. "These companies are looking to survive, so they're willing to do short-term campaigns without minimums, at discounted rates," Hroncich says.
A small company can contract with a freelance graphic artist or video production company to design its ads or hire an advertising firm to do both the design and placement of the ad campaigns. In some cases, Cox says, the media outlet will work with advertisers to produce the spots.
Entrepreneurs should be prepared to haggle over pricing, he says, being aware that it's better to run more spots at a less desirable time than to blow their ad budgets on one prime-time slot.
Hroncich says that businesses can get a week's worth of oft-repeated radio spots for $1,500 in many markets: "You'll either see results immediately or you won't, so you can see how it goes. Your rates may go up later, but by then you'll know if it's worth it."
Similarly, he suggests that his smaller clients try month-long banner ads on targeted Web sites or week-long ads on cable television. "Cable is cheap as opposed to broadcast TV and the cable viewers will be local. It may cost $1,000 to $2,500 to produce a cable advertisement, and you could air it for $25 or $50 a spot, depending on what time of day and what shows you're looking at," Hroncich says.
[credit : http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/apr2009/sb20090414_800224.htm?chan=technology_technology+index+page_top+stories]
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