Volunteer Landing: September 2011

Friday, September 30, 2011

Healthy H1 2011 Gains Put US Online Ad Spending on Track for Record Year - eMarketer

Spending nears $15 billion in 2011’s first six months. The weakened US economy has most industries facing tough times. But the latest numbers from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Pricewat

via emarketer.com

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

"Let's Do It": Famous Last Words Of Executed Criminals

Most of the time people don't get to pick their last words. Executions are an exception.

While strapped into the electric chair or tied to a noose or standing before a firing squad, criminals have spoken dramatic one-liners that became famous.

Aileen Wuornos: "I’ll be back like Independence Day"

" I’d just like to say I’m sailing with the rock, and I’ll be back like Independence Day, with Jesus June 6. Like the movie, big mother ship and all, I’ll be back.”

While working as a prostitute, Aileen Wuornos reportedly killed six men between 1989 and 1990, claimed they attempted to rape her. At her Oct. 9, 2002, execution by lethal injection, Wuornos stated, "I’d just like to say I’m sailing with the rock, and I’ll be back like Independence Day, with Jesus June 6. Like the movie, big mother ship and all, I’ll be back.”

Wuornos' life has been the subject of Hollywood speculation, including Charlize Theron's famous 2003 movie 'Monster', as well as a 1992 documentary "Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer," made by Nick Broomfield.

John Wayne Gacy: "Kiss My Ass"

"Kiss my ass."

The "killer clown" tortured, raped, and murdered 33 men between 1972 and 1978. John Wayne Gacy earned his moniker, and possibly started the scary clown phobia, because he dressed up as Pogo the Clown to entertain at kids' birthday parties.

One of America's most famous serial killers was arrested in 1978, and executed on May 10, 1994. His famous last words are also a popular angry retort.

G.W. Green: "Let’s do it, man. Lock and load. Ain’t life a [expletive deleted]?"

"Let’s do it, man. Lock and load. Ain’t life a [expletive deleted]?"

G.W. Green was convicted in 1991 of killing John Denson, a Montgomery County, Texas, juvenile probation officer. He was executed Nov. 12, 1991.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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Sunday, September 25, 2011

Facebook Changes Upend Advertiser and Agency Models

The media is already dissecting yesterday's Facebook event, where the company unveiled major new changes to their platform. Par for the course, really. Drama always accompanies any change to the Facebook site or platform.

But I see drama brewing in a place unaccustomed to it, and involving a different kind of media — the media buying agencies that wield most of the money spent on advertising on the Facebook platform and the companies they represent.

It would seem that the more time consumers spend on Facebook (over 53 billion minutes a month, according to Nielsen), the more the advertising economy would benefit, as more advertising inventory — what Facebook sells and media agencies buy — becomes more plentiful.

But alas, something appears to be broken, or breaking.

The classic, traditional media buying agencies (the big ones, most of them owned by the ad agency holding companies) are used to buying nouns — impressions, commercials, search results, clicks. These are "things" that display once, and then disappear, unless more of them are bought. Publishers have traditionally sold those "things" to them in an environment that operates with fairly little friction. Everything fit on a spreadsheet, or through an ad network. Even when optimizing to a transaction, they do so with tacit knowledge of what each transaction is worth.

One of the most significant new Facebook platform changes emphasizes their move towards making consumers' connections to content and activities more meaningful. Simple and vague "likes" are giving way to "listening to", "read", "hiked", "eating". The Facebook graph is becoming verb- and story-based. It presents a tremendous opportunity for advertisers to create and amplify positive engagements consumers are having with their products, or the lifestyles those products represent.

If all this doesn't sound like something that media agencies do for a living, you're right. Earning, amplifying, and optimizing towards engagement is just not what media agency systems and personnel are meant to support. Technology platforms here and there sprout up to help them do it better, but even those platforms become commodities if engagement-driven efforts are not handled and managed expertly, in an always-on way. Facebook's massive reach and importance to the web at large, and its major engagement-maximizing changes on the horizon, mean engagement-led (and not impression-led) advertising has never been more important.

To make the most of Facebook's changes, brands must:

Understand what the value of each kind of consumer engagement is to their business.

Be comfortable with the fact that they are generally not actually "managing communities" on Facebook, but rather, programming content and engagement channels.

Create experiences that enhance other experiences.

Find each and every way to ensure that as many of the right people have those experiences as possible, so they can efficiently affect their short- and long-term business goals.

Engagement across — and through — the Facebook platform will demand that these aspects be managed holistically and be optimized towards engagement. And as Facebook finds its way into other areas of media and our lives, this will become even more important. Siloed agencies don't help make these kinds of things happen. Silos are for storing. And Facebook is about sharing.

Media agencies have always been about breadth, reach and conversion. Advertising in social media should always be working towards a goal of delivering meaningful engagement at scale, and augmenting the value of the media that exists between people. This requires complicated planning, strategy, and execution across disciplines that are not in the wheelhouse of traditional media buying agencies — or in the wheelhouse of many agencies for that matter.

It is not all a loss for the classic media buying agency. As Facebook collects more data, and (likely) eventually begins powering display advertising infused with its data and intelligence, impressions can continue to be bought at scale, helping to deliver a brand message to as many people as possible — which will always be necessary.

But a comprehensive advertising plan now demands an engagement component that complements reach and frequency models. The dawn of the engagement age and agency is near, and the upcoming Facebook platform changes will only bring it about sooner.

Be prepared.

via blogs.hbr.org

Friday, September 23, 2011

HH brothers and sisters

Friday, September 16, 2011

Millennials More Comfortable with M-Commerce - eMarketer

Younger shoppers show different mobile behaviors. As m-commerce becomes more widely adopted, distinct demographic characteristics are emerging. More smartphone and tablet owners are researching produc

via emarketer.com

Home » Ad & Media Strategies » IAB Brings Scale to Mobile: Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence Issues Guidelines for Creating In-App Ads

IAB Brings Scale to Mobile: Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence Issues Guidelines for Creating In-App Ads

Otilia Otlacan | September 12, 2011

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Public Comment Periods Opens for ‘Mobile Rich Media Ad Interface Definitions’—MRAID—Which Standardizes Communication Between Ads and Apps To Increase Efficiency

NEW YORK – The IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence (http://www.iab.net/mmcoe) released “Mobile Rich Media Ad Interface Definitions,” or MRAID (http://www.iab.net/mraid), for public comment. This initiative defines a common API (Application Programming Interface) for mobile rich media advertisements, establishing a framework of principles and guidelines to help the mobile marketplace reach new levels of consistency, efficiency and effectiveness.

The growth, versatility and potential of in-application advertising have drawn strong interest from agencies, publishers, vendors and ad designers. However, accompanying this industry enthusiasm has been a surge of disparate APIs from numerous rich media vendors working with publishers to enable these dynamic ads. Multiple, incompatible APIs force advertisers to re-write the programming behind their ad creative several times for a single campaign, creating complexity and adversely impacting their resources.

“Standardizing the development of mobile rich media creative will be a strong benefit for both the mobile and the ad industry overall,” said Anna Bager, Vice President & General Manager of the IAB’s Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence. “MRAID provides creative developers with opportunities to achieve reach and scale efficiently.”

“As the premier digital media company, Yahoo! works with many different advertisers and rich media vendors,” said Alex Linde, Director, Mobile & Tablet Advertising, Yahoo! and IAB MRAID working group member. “We know first hand how challenging it would be to bring scale to mobile advertising without a standard for in-application mobile rich media ad serving and a single set of industry-accepted guidelines for agencies and designers. We believe that MRAID is essential to sustain momentum in this rapidly growing industry.”

Under the IAB’s draft MRAID guidelines, if a mobile app is “MRAID compliant,” it will read, understand and correctly display ads developed using the MRAID instruction specification. At the same time, MRAID-compliant mobile rich media ads will operate within MRAID compliant applications from any publisher – allowing agencies to quickly and easily run rich, interactive mobile creative across apps from various publishers.

The public comment period for the IAB’s release of MRAID will run through September 30, 2011. Once the public comment period closes, the MRAID working group will meet to evaluate comments received, make any needed changes to the draft MRAID spec, and release final version of MRAID 1.0. Comments are being accepted by email at mobile@iab.net.

For a copy of the public comment version of MRAID 1.0 and more information about MRAID, the working group and its members, please visit: http://www.iab.net/mraid

About the IAB

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) [www.iab.net] is comprised of more than 500 leading media and technology companies who are responsible for selling 86% of online advertising in the United States. On behalf of its members, the IAB is dedicated to the growth of the interactive advertising marketplace, of interactive’s share of total marketing spend, and of its members’ share of total marketing spend. The IAB educates marketers, agencies, media companies and the wider business community about the value of interactive advertising. Working with its member companies, the IAB evaluates and recommends standards and practices and fields critical research on interactive advertising. Founded in 1996, the IAB is headquartered in New York City with a Public Policy office in Washington, D.C. For more information, please visit www.iab.net.

Otilia is the founder and editor of AdOperationsOnline.com, launched in 2008. She currently provides online business consulting through her company, RightFit Media, and blogs about all things online at www.otiliaotlacan.com.

Otilia Otlacan

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Tags: alex linde, iab mobile marketing center of excellence, mobile rich media ad interface definitions, mraid, Rihanna;, video and mobile advertising

Category: Ad & Media Strategies, Digital Intelligence, IAB, Mobile Advertising, Online Advertising Challenges

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