Using Facebook Connect to Target Ads On Your Website

Since its inception, there have been many implementations of Facebook Connect, most notably CNN’s use of it to create a live, co-viewing experience for the inauguration. The implementations to this point have been used to socialize non-social websites, create co-viewing experiences and to increase value of a website by importing a users social network. I have not seen Facebook Connect used as a way to create hyper-targeted ads on those third-party websites utilizing Facebook Connect data portability.

Advertising In A Recession

Yesterday, I came across this presentation on Adverlab. It is a presentation from the UK Economist’s sales department in what seems to be an attempt to convince their advertisers not to cut their media budgets.

The Hype Machine Expands Its Advertising Opportunities

I have noticed The Hype Machine has moved past the standard ad units (300x250s and 160x600s) to more interesting units. This is a full skin and banner roadblock by slotMusic. It stays constant on the “Latest” page and the “Popular” page. I think it looks great, but this is contingent on using the right creative. The only thing; I would like to see the skin go down the entire length of the page.

Since I have such a soft spot for HypeM, I’m glad to see they are expanding their advertising opportunities and hopefully making some money.

Target Pushes New Christina Aguilera Single

In support of Christina Aguilera’s latest album, being sold exclusively at Target stores, Target is getting rather innovative in their outdoor advertising. In the 49th street station, there has been this interactive billboard on the downtown train platform.

There are multiple ways to interact with the unit. The first being text “Music” to “Target” on your mobile phone (does not work with Verizon Wireless) in order to receive the ringtone of Aguilera’s new single, “Keeps Gettin’ Better”.

Twitter and Digg Intend to Make Money

The Silicon Valley Insider posted a couple of articles this week about what Twitter and Digg intend to do to make money. Here is what they found:

Digg:

• Ante says Digg will have to “dial back some of its expansion plans.” Says Adelson: “Now I am pressured to keep costs reasonable and focus more on the top-line revenue, which we really haven’t done ever.” After its last round of funding Digg said it would double headcount before December 2009. Maybe not now.
• Insert ads into its RSS feeds.
• Ante says Digg is “on the verge” of improving its search and sell ads against search results.
• Digg is “within a month of closing a deal with a mobile ad provider to sell more ads on cell phones,”says Ante.
  
• Buy Digg clones to expand internationally. “There are Digg clones around the world in every country,” says Adelson. “I could go into those markets and clean up those sites. If I needed more capital to do a deal, I could probably do it.”
• Add new features to make users click more.

Twitter:

• Revenue is coming Q1, Evan promises. “I don’t want to raise money in 2009.”
• Twitter is in talks with “large consumer packaged good companies.” But no word yet on just what that means.
• In the works: Grouping Twitter friends into cliques for easier following, a feature the microblogging service has been promising since at least June.
• Also being promised: Making Twitter easier to use for a general audience. Evan didn’t mince words here — “It’s amazing anyone uses Twitter today,” he said. “It’s hard.”

MySpace Enters Mobile Video Ad Space… Backwards

MySpace announced today they will be delivering video to mobile phones by streaming those videos through MySpace Mobile. The video service is free and will be supported by advertisements. While it is great idea by MySpace to move into the mobile video and mobile advertising market, they are walking in backwards from an ad perspective. Do they really think a mobile phone user will sit through a pre-roll ad before their :30 second video?

The Silicon Valley Insider has a report from TubeMogul that concludes “most people don’t watch web video for more than 60 seconds.”

Now, I am willing to bet that these numbers are drastically lower for mobile video. If a person sitting in a chair in their office does not watch a video for more than 60 seconds, how long do you think the person waiting for the bus is willing to watch a video? And if there is an ad before that video…not very long.

New York Times Magazine Special: Multiscreen Mad Men

>>>The following is an interview from NYTimes magazine with BENJAMIN PALMER (the C.E.O. of the Barbarian Group, an Internet advertising and marketing firm based in Boston. He helped create the ‘‘Subservient Chicken’’ online campaign for Burger King), LARS BASTHOLM (chief creative officer at AKQA, where he has worked on campaigns for Xbox, Coca-Cola and Motorola) and ROBERT RASMUSSEN (executive creative director of the Nike account at R/GA, an agency that specializes in digital media. He has created campaigns for ESPN, Sega and JetBlue).<<<

I. THE END OF FLOW

Jack Hitt: I read a study recently suggesting that Americans now swim through most of their day looking at some kind of screen — screens on their cellphones, on their desks, in their kitchens, everything from digital billboards on the highway and in the back of a cab to the eruption of screens in urban centers. Times Square is no longer an unusual attraction; it’s the norm. The side of a building can now be made to broadcast video. There is hardly a public space left — a bar, a gym, the dentist’s office — that hasn’t been vanquished by some kind of screen. Now, let’s say I’ve got something to sell. This multiplicity of screens would seem to be a good thing, wouldn’t it?

Benjamin Palmer: What the proliferation of screens has done is give a bazillion creators the power to publish. There are now billions of hours of content, which means new places for advertisers to latch on to — lots of content that pockets of people find interesting. But the shift you’re describing makes things more complicated for advertisers too. When the TV networks held the reins for content, all advertising had to do was buy into the public consciousness of entertainment, which was television.

How Hulu will beat YouTube

Last month, Time.com named Hulu the #4 best invention of 2008. Hulu was bookended by The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and The Large Hadron Collider. While this ranking seems to be a bit extreme, especially since Hulu was only the 31st best website of 2008 also according to Time, there is no doubt it has made a major impact in the distribution and monetization of digital content and online video.

Hulu was in-part created by NBC Universal and News Corp. as a response to the behemoth that is YouTube. The purpose of Hulu is to distribute their programs on their terms. While this was first met with some criticism, this is now for the most part non-existent. The behemoth that is still YouTube, still based in UGC, is now feeling pressure from Hulu, and as a response YouTube is scrambling to partner with traditional media companies like Metro-Goldwyn Mayer and CBS. YouTube is taking many steps to monetize its site (media partnerships to attract advertisers, sponsored videos in search results), but it seems like these steps are not enough. The Financial Times reported Hulu is set to surpass YouTube in revenues by 2010, the majority of this being advertising revenues.

So, what is the difference between the advertising opportunities on Hulu and those on YouTube?

Targetability of iPhone App Ads

We all know Apple uses the iPhone to sell applications at the App Store, but what about the notion Apple is using applications to sell the iPhone at the Apple Store? Last night, while watching episode 2 of Top Chef, the iPhone commercial promoting the UrbanSpoon app appeared twice.

Given the content of the show and the given audience, this ad is extremely relevant. The question is whether this ad is to push the Urban Spoon application, the iPhone or both. Based on the fact that Apple makes no money on this free application, it is safe to assume Apple is using the vast collection of applications to make a compelling case for why you should purchase an iPhone. The use of application as creative messaging gives great possibility to how targeted the ads can be.

Turning Consumers Into Storytlrs

Storytelling has long been a way to effectively communicate a message, while creating a strong relationship between the story and the audience. Advertising agencies like the newly launched Dandelion are focused solely on creating meaningful brand interactions through storytelling. The storytelling is executed through highly produced branded serial content. We know agencies can tell very engaging brand stories, but what about the consumer?

Storytlr is a company that aggregates tweets, FB status updates, flickr posts, etc. from a specific event and compiles them into a packaged story of your life. Mashable gives a detailed recap of its offerings in a post entitled How To: Turn Your Photos, Video and Tweets into Stories.

I think it is an interesting property any company can use to help their customers (who use the products) tell a story, instead of hiring an agency to tell it. Essentially, an advertiser can use Storytlr to have their customers create mini stories about how they interact with that specific brand. This can either be positioned as a contest or just a testament to the power of a brand in one’s life.

This also opens opportunity for Storytlr. While they state on their About page “Storytlr is not a startup, just a fun project that we are building during our free time,” I think they could begin to develop some sort of advertiser based business model by creating white label versions of Storytlr for a brand to skin and put on the advertiser’s own website. Another opportunity would be to create branded Story Channels within Storytlr.com. Finally, it would be interesting to see where brands appear within existing stories on the site.

Brands always have a story to tell from their perspective, but I think it is the story from the perspective of the consumer that brands benefit much more.