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.

ESPN.com Relaunch And Redesign

ESPN.com is out of beta and re-launched this morning. It launches with a pretty cool prestitial from Ford F-150, introducing the new site. Ford also sponsored the banner ads and video units on the homepage.

The Ultimate Social Media Search Engine

Just days after I gave my list of social media search and reputation management tools, Steve Rubel of Micro Persuasion points us to the launch of the social media search aggregator, WhosTalkin. The people at WhosTalkin made the announcement on their blog on Thursday; ”After 7 months of development, we are finally unveiling the WhosTalkin.com Platform to the public! Our private beta testers gave it their all and helped us shape the direction and face of WhosTalkin.com. With their guidance made the following changes below.”

My 2009 Predictions

I would be negligent as a person who consumes so much information and spends so much time engulfed in social media not to make my own predictions for 2009. So, here they are…

1. Distribution rules.
   - New media companies will establish distribution networks before they build a single destination for their content. Companies will understand the need to put their efforts to reaching an audience across the web, instead of driving them to a single destination. As I have noted in a previous post, TVLoop is a prime example of this. Instead of creating a site similar to Hulu, where all the content lives on a single destination, they first created a distribution network reaching an audience that already existed on social networking sites. Without sounding cliche, companies need to fish where the fish are instead of exerting their efforts luring them to a single trap. The most important thing is understanding how to monetize these distribution networks and create monetary value for the content. 

The Tools To Monitor Social Media and Your Online Identity

Companies need to come to the realization that their brands exist and are shaped beyond their direct influence. For as long as brands have existed, consumers have had an opinion about them. Unlike twenty years ago, when those opinions could only be shared within small face-to-face networks, they can now be shared on a constantly expanding massive scale. Services like Twitter, Facebook and blogs enable this. Below is a fairly comprehensive list of the tools needed to track your brand and your online identity. See what they are saying about you…

Marley and Me – The Dog Dies…Or Does It?

The Movie Blog reports on a “viral marketing” campaign around Marley and Me. They received an “email from a girl named ‘Stephanie’ with the images you see below, trying to pass herself off as just some random person sending out a news tips (clearly she’s with the studio or marketing company working for the studio). Her email ends with ‘This is going to be worse than when they shot Bambi’s mother.’”

For some reason this does not seem like a studio funded viral marketing campaign, it just doesn’t make sense to me. Yes, viral/guerrilla marketing is supposed to create buzz and stir up some sort of controversy (which I guess it has done, since I’m writing this post), but this doesn’t seem to have any relevance to the movie, to general media campaign or the target audience.

See the photos below.

2009 The Year Of Mobile Social Networking

One prediction I have for 2009 and the future of social media is the development and adoption of mobile social networks. What mobile does for social networking, if done correctly, is it effectively and seamlessly connects online relationships with offline experiences. The most popular features of social networking, like Facebook events, already do just that. With mobile social networks though, this can be accomplished with a lot more immediacy. There is the argument that online social networks causes people to become isolated and relinquish their need for real human interaction, but I think it actually enhances it. Once you are able to move outside of your house with these capabilities, I think this medium will begin to reach its full potential.

eMarketer released a report yesterday claiming there is major growth in mobile social networking. Overall, the number of people who accessed social networks from their mobile devices increased by 182% from September 2007 to October 2008.

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.

TVLoop – TV Distribution To TV Destination

Watercooler’s TVLoop is a TV entertainment product, which lives as an application on users social networking profiles. The application serves as both fan content (pics, trivia, quotes) and video distribution platform. Their other product, is FanSection, which is a sports fan application that can be installed to your profile.

In October, Watercooler announced their partnership with Hulu, increasing their TV offering by 40 more shows. Earlier this month, they had another major announcement; Watercooler is going to roll up all their video under one site, TVLoop.com. The distribution network will continue to exist.

Some Make Resolutions, Some Make Predictions

Here are a handful of links to some predictions for 2009:

eMarketer’s Predictions for 2009

Social media expert and co-author of “Groundswell” Charlene Li’s predictions for 2009

2009 predictions from 15 social media experts – from Jaffe Juice

Hypebot’s music industry predictions

Music Alley’s digital music predictions