Copenhagen INK

On Monday, the world’s largest social networking site opened parts of its code to the public. Now, third-party developers can build Facebook applications that will let users post status updates, share pictures and links, and interact with most other elements of the site without ever visiting Facebook.com. Apparently, the company is prepared to lose gobs of traffic and, in turn, revenue from display ads on the site.

Using the new Facebook Open Stream API, hundreds of software developers are likely to build thousands of different Web sites, desktop clients, and mobile apps that will function as personalized windows into the Facebook universe. Hardcore users will get a real-time feed of status updates from their friends; photo-lovers will find new ways to tag and geo-locate images; news hounds will be able to see a list of the most popular articles shared amongst their friends. You’re going to see people creating a lot of different means of interacting with what is ultimately this incredible engine of communication which is Facebook.

Sound familiar, Twitter users? An open platform for most of its three-year history, the popular microblogging service has cultivated a colorful ecosystem of third-party applications, from desktop program Tweetdeck to investor community StockTwits. With so many great apps available to them, Twitter users now post messages using these services with greater frequency – 55%, according to one estimate – than they do on the Twitter.com site itself. Outsourcing so much traffic may work for Twitter, a company which has hinted it doesn’t intend to base its business on ads placed on its home page.

But at Facebook, display ads on the home page make up a bulk of the $300 million the company is projected to take in this year. If a slice of the site’s 200 million active users start relying on some third-party app rather than visiting Facebook.com, revenues could take a hit.

It appears that the company is planning to replace the revenues it will lose from banner ads with a new type of revenue: in-stream ads, which would appear alongside status updates and other “news stories,” even on third-party apps. During her recent visit to New York, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told attendees of the AdAge Digital conference that banner ads “interrupt your experience,” and shared with BusinessWeek editor-in-chief Stephen Adler that text ads “are really part of the search experience.” While the social network does carry both banner and text ads, the company has recently experimented with campaigns from Honda and Ben & Jerry’s, which saw users voluntarily interacting with those brands and posting “news stories” about them in their activity streams. “So the advertising experience itself is very integrated into the Facebook experience,” Sandberg told Adler. For the reasons Sandberg outlines, in-stream ads are intriguing – even more so if they could be pushed to a network of hundreds of Facebook applications.

Personally, is there any market for this? As an Facebook user, you look at the “privacy” issues on Facebook, try keeping the thousands of application developers in line! Or, just admit that once you post something on FB it’s out there for all to see and use as they see fit…… Has our lives become an open book?

With so much information online about people and companies it’s become quite common to simply “Google” someone when you want to know more about them. From a business building standpoint it’s good practice to own as much of the real estate that pops up under you name on page one as you can.

Social media profiles, like those on Facebook or LinkedIn are great candidates for just such a practice. Google, however, has started playing around with a new tool called profiles and this last week made it very public. Anyone who can create an account on Google and verify their real name through a screening routine can now have a personal profile page on Google.

The page editor allows you to upload images, link to multiple websites, and create a rich text bio. There’s even a way for people to click on a link to contact you directly. Not really sure how Google treats those links, but seems like a nice place to have linking to your site.

An example:

So, is this all part of Google’s grand plan to build a new social networking site without even trying?

Actually this is old news… (3 months), however still interesting from the point of view, that WPP (and thereby Group M’s media agencies) now are going to advice their clients about what system to use for website tracking… (And proberly are going to suggest one system before som others ). Furthermore the plan calls for WPP in 12-18 months to shift its own technology and data products onto Omniture’s platform. This includes 24/7′s ad-serving systems and TNS’ data collection platforms…:

WPP has formed a strategic partnership with Omniture, the online optimisation company, which will see the marketing services group invest $25m in Omniture shares and place Omniture consultants inside WPP agencies.

The partnership also includes joint approaches to mutual clients and joint technology development, including the integration of Omniture and WPP data and products.

The two companies will also share marketing insights and consult on best practices, with 500 WPP employees trained on Omniture products within the first year of the partnership.

Read the full article over at Adweek.

I know a lot of the readers of this blog use the Adwords interface on a daily basis, therefore you properly have had a look at the new interface… However here’s the key point on what’s new in the interface:

Head over to the Google adwords blog for the full monty…

Just finished reading Razorfish digital outlook report for 2009. (Razorfish is a US interactive ad agency). While surfing the internet this morning, I found this blog post that sums up the findings/predictions related to ad networks:

• An increasing reliance on ROI and proven channels like search
• A continued shift of budget away from portals
• Renewed fragmentation in the ad network space

More specifically:

Despite the drive towards increased efficiency because of the recession, ad networks as a category saw only a slight increase in share year-over-year. One trend reversal we saw was in the concentration of spend amongst the top five ad networks dropping to 62% from 76% in 2007. A few things contributed to this change in direction. The first is a rise in spend outside the U.S. and the development of branded networks such as Forbes, Turner Entertainment and Fox Audience Network, and the move of many premium advertisers away from general networks. Additionally, the rise of specialty vertical networks like the community sites BuzzLogic, Six Apart, Lotame and BlogHer has further fragmented this category and put a refocus on testing the emergent opportunities.

But at the same time as Razorfish is seeing more ad network diversification, they are predicting:

• Online ad networks will contract; open ad exchanges will expand

In 2009, the online ad network world will see both contraction and expansion:

• The traditional ad network world will contract as competition for declining ad dollars increases. There are simply too many broad networks competing for the same inventory and not telling a new story.
• At the same time, branded networks will expand. Large publishers (e.g. the Fox Audience Network and Turner Entertainment) will continue to take back control of their inventory and monetize it themselves, or they will work with fewer ad networks to ensure quality and maximize value.
• Expansion will also come in the form of Ad Exchanges like Right Media, DoubleClick and AdECN, which are newer open markets for online ad inventory that increase buying efficiency by delivering unprecedented transparency in the process. Development of this ecosystem will put further pressure on small and mid-tier ad
  networks to survive. If Ad Exchanges are widely adopted, it could revolutionize how online media is bought and sold.

So which will it be, more ad networks or less? Most pundits are predicting less. However, I believe that there will be more. The fourth generation of ad networks are living in an environment where access to inventory is getting commoditized (through ad exchanges), data for targeting is getting commoditized (albeit slower, through companies like Lookery and Blue Kai), and targeting algorithms are turning out to be not as effective as previously thought (more data usually beats better algorithms). In this instance, sales execution becomes the key differentiator. And sales teams typically work best when they can focus on a set of accounts with a lot of commonality, whether demographic, industry, or geography. This means that it will be easier (not harder) for smart small teams of sales people to start their own targeted ad networks. We’re already seeing some of this as Razorfish notes above.

So, what do you think? I think we’ll see more ad networks, not less… and I think that in 2009 we will see the rise of more branded networks (Fox Audience Network, CBS, Turner Entertainment etc.)

Download the full report from Razorfish.

Just read this interesting article over at Imedia Connection, thought I would share it. Some key take out’s from the article:

• Advertisers apply two methods to their ad spend: direct response and brand advertising
• Display ads and paid search pull dollars from different budgets, and have different goals
• Paid search simply doesn’t have enough viable inventory in any given category to enable any significant advertiser (large spender) to move large portions of their budget to paid search.
• Ultimately, paid search matters far more to the search engines than it does to any one advertiser.

Do you agree? Read the full article here.

Hmm just saw this video, showing Pattie Maes, a professor at the MIT Media Lab, presenting a remarkable project she’s working on with student Pranav Mistry… It’s called the “sixth sense.” (We take in information from the world with our five senses, but by harnessing the power of the web, we could take in so much more…) Take a look – what do you think, is this the future:

Found these 2 articles about a new ad-funded video service on YouTube and a Partnership between Myspace and Visible Measures:

The joint venture made by YouTube and Universal will be called Vevo, and hopes to mirror rival Hulu.com’s success in bringing in ad revenue from streaming videos and television content, with music. It will be a “premium online music video hub” with the hope that it will appeal to younger  audiences, which will attract advertisers to use the portal to target them. Vevo will undoubtedly become essential for advertisers to reach this particular demographic, which are currently difficult to reach. Read the whole article at Brandrepublic

Yahoo Japan Corp. will begin distributing targeted content via electronic billboards in train stations and other facilities, based on who is walking past.

The company is teaming with Comel Co., which installs and operates electronic billboards. Cameras mounted on Comel’s billboards will photograph passersby. Characteristics such as sex and age will be determined using facial analysis technology from NEC Soft Ltd., according to the companies.

Yahoo Japan will begin the campaign with 500 billboards in train stations and shopping malls in Southern Japan, displaying content like news, weather and ads. Yahoo will then expand the service to Tokyo and Osaka, doubling the number of the billboards, writes CrunchGear.

Last summer, an article in The New York Times about billboards with facial-recognition capabilities caused a tempest over privacy issues. One company offering such technology, TruMedia Technologies, sent a letter to the paper explaining that the company would never record or store any video from the billboards.

The technology behind the billboards only analyzes the images its cameras take. No individually identifiable info is ever stored, the letter stated.

TruMedia’s camera-equipped billboards – inspired by Israeli surveillance – track viewers’ faces to gather reliable viewing data for digital displays and screens.

Source: Marketing Vox

Axe is known for doing pretty extensive campaigns using the latest technology. For the launch of AXE Darktemptation in Japan Axe created a ninety-day viral game competition: Participants hunted for chocolate-flavoured “Chocoman”, the CM character of AXE Darktemptaion, using their cell phones and competed with each other over the number of points accumulated to win the prize money. Have a look at this site for a full walk-through of the concept and the outcome: http://pieces.bascule.co.jp/2008/axechocoman/en/

And then on this Tuesday afternoon, what better than a couple of YouTube videos… 

I always find myself smiling when watching this kind of videos.  We have all seen the flash mob at New York Grand Central station. Now T-mobile and Belgian VTM has joined this fun kind of “happetising”:

Just talked to one of my collegaues, who are working on a digital project using augmented reality (AR). So surfed the Internet for some more info on AR… AR deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data (virtual reality), where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time.

AR could of course be used in many ways in connection with digital campaigns. I found one great example by GE, using AR to engage viewers and encourage them to interact directly with the message: GE’s Plug Into The Smart Grid

Furthermore GE does do a few unique and innovative things with it:

• You have to ‘open the door’ – By twisting and turning the Smart Grid marker, you are actually activating it, so that right from the start you feel like a part of the experience.
• You can interact with the model – By blowing into the microphone, you actually cause the wind turbines to spin, which encourages you to interact with the experience and experiment with what’s possible. You can also tilt the Solar Energy model back and forth to move the sun and cause the solar panels to follow.
• You can see through the page – By turning the marker into a ‘window’, GE has added an extra dimension to the experience. Instead of looking at a semi-3D model that pops off the page, it actually looks like it has become a part of the page, and that you’re holding a whole little world in your hands.

In addition to the details of the model, there are a couple of interesting ways that GE has extended the campaign to reach an even larger audience.

• GE used a YouTube video to demonstrate the technology – By taping into the YouTube community, they opened up the experience to a whole new audience. Plus, it’s such a new and interesting idea that people want to watch and pass along the video demo all on its own, leading to more than a million views in less than a month! You can see the video here:

For more info on AR, check out this site: http://www.howstuffworks.com/augmented-reality.htm

One of my colleagues gave me these insights into Asian youth culture, during a brainstorm for a pitch…  Thought I would share it with you:

In north Asian beauty point of view, cuteness/ innocent power is greater than sexiness…BUT IF YOU ARE CUTE AND SEXY (look at those Japanese AV idols), then you definitely sell. The Asians grew up with Japanese manga, plus they have the cuteness complex even when they grow up.

With such audience mindset, “figure” (See picture) actually starts from toy collection ex. Hello Kitty / Doraemon… And almost every adult do not want to fully grow up, even when they physically grow up, they still tend to collect something cute to present they are still child like sometimes.

Figure doll was initially started in HK, then spread out to Taiwan and China, south east Asia… (http://www.figureexchange.com/). You can go into the figure store and tailor made your own figures, based on your feature, personality, and they can even make the scene with your own figure in it.

Figure has become a common marketing tool for brands / celebrities to engage their consumers, almost every idol / singer in Asia north has their own figure when they launch campaign / release album, and  fans collect, trade and even auction them. Gwen Stefani’s 2nd parfume  ”Harajuku Lovers” also adopted this trend: http://www.hlfragrance.com/ Even young adults will… Keroro and Tuziki are 2 recent popular iconic figures as well, they were created by students then got popular.

If we can base on such trend / behavior of why North Asians are crazy about such little things, then maybe we can find relevant elements to engage consumers. Just wait and see, soon South East Asia might follow this trend…at least it has blown to Thailand recently already….