My DVR Made Me Culturally Late

I continue to have a negative outlook on the reality TV show era, despite its huge popularity across the middle of this great nation. However, I have been a dedicated follower to “Rob & Big,” MTVs weekly parade of pro skateboarder Rob Dyrdek and his bodyguard/best friend Christopher “Big Black” Boykins.

This past week, the season finale showed the duo parting ways as Big Black gave birth to his daughter and moved out of the pair’s Hollywood hill’s home. I was genuinely touched by Big Black working towards fatherhood, and was devastated knowing the series was over.
As I woke up this morning just waiting to talk about it with someone, I realized that I had watched the episode on my DVR, five days after it initially aired.

Being in marketing and media means staying culturally relevant, and as I thought I woke up with breaking news, it was last week’s hot topic. The fine line between controlling content and staying current on my media was definitely blurred for me yesterday.

I hope my mistake will be a warning to you all; DVR/Tivo is only as powerful as the way you use it. Let yourself get too behind, and it’s like trying to discuss last week’s newspaper headlines; It’s done and no one cares any more.

The State of The Industry – Post AdTech

AdTech 2008 was BIG; 14,000 attendees big.

Being only my 2nd AdTech, I can honestly say my perspective and knowledge has grown dramatically since I attended last year. I’ve walked the floor, talked to booths, and observed very intensely the action in Moscone Center.

The Good:
There seems to be genuine positive effort towards developing this industry into more than just banner ads and search. Both viable programs and a necessary element to any media plan for sure. But the future is bright beyond those traditional placements. All week I heard lots of talk about emerging media, but not so much about how to execute, (which seems par for the course at this point). I openly admit that I am biased because everyday I’m surrounded with five of the most forward thinking individuals I’ve ever known. We pride ourselves on taking chances and being thought leaders. Our belief is in progress, and we are passionate about the development of this industry. The question is who will follow and match our energy and excitement?

The Bad:
I don’t pretend to be an expert by any means. My path in this business is a steep steep learning curve, yet I do think I’ve developed worthy opinions and ideas rather quickly. HOWEVER, I should not be able to walk up to several booths, and stump employees of presenting companies. I challenged several of the individuals at a couple technology company booths (automated search and in- text advertising), and I was shocked to hear that there were no answers to my questions. I asked a Marin Software employee about their solution’s level of automation when it came to deep link URL indexing and dynamic updates to creative copy. To a Search Engine Marketing (SEM) professional, especially one who works for an SEM technology company, this question shouldn’t be that challenging. The gentlemen told me it was his second week and he didn’t know what that was. SO WHY WAS HE ON THE FLOOR? (This is your cue to click here --> Kenshoo)

It pains me to sit around thinking that our industry is growing and maturing, yet companies claiming to change the way our business functions can’t put an educated body on the floor of one of the industry’s most vital events.
AdTech 2008 was an educational and exciting week, and I’m excited to see how our industry responds as a whole.

AdTech Continues

Day two of Ad:Tech took me to “Gamer Nation: Exploring Advertising Effectiveness in the Gaming Ecosytem” and I must say the panel was fantastic. Needless to say Catalyst Senior Partner and Strategist Jim Nichols led the charge providing great insights to the agency perspective on gaming. Thankfully he was the only one on stage not selling anything.

Julie Shumacher of Double Fusion opened up with an interesting theory about how games have always been the original social networks and I completely agree with her. How many people spent nights growing up playing Monopoly or card games with their family? The definition of a social community is people interacting around a common theme, and I think that has duly set the stage for social networks of today.

The most interesting vibe was the battle between Shumacher and Chuck Frizelle of XBOX. The whole time I was waiting for it to blow up into a namecalling, we can do this and you can’t type session. Despite her best efforts, I have to say Frizelle came out on top with his endless Massive plugs. (For those non- industry readers, Microsoft owns Massive, Double Fusion’s direct competitor in the dynamic in- game advertising space).

Day 3 to come…

In Text Ads Are Legit

Web users are becoming more and more adjusted to the fact that free content is going to come with advertising. But I don't think this is something that should hinder users from searching the web or reading their favorite blogs (like this one), and it should be looked at as something that heightens the user experience.

As AdTech approaches this week in San Francisco, it's about time to bring up some amazing new technologies making the web an even more personalized place to be.

In text advertising has become a hot topic in recent months as several companies have come out with interesting ways to build new inventory into blogs and articles across the web.

Kontera, a Sequoia backed Israeli company is providing some really creative solutions for both publishers and advertisers. From a user stand point it's simple; as you read an article, certain keyword have been undelined. When you scroll over these keywords with your mouse, a window pops up with contextually relevant ads and article links in a clean, clear environment.

Many groups like Snap, and Vibrant Media are offering similar technologies but I think they fall shot when it comes to the depth of their contextual matching.

Kontera seperates themselves by offering contextual matching on a "subtopic" level. Meaning they don't waste time offering "Lower My Bills" ads on any finance page. Rather they will show an ad offering car insurance quotes for an article regarding the insurance industry,

As advertising penetrates more and more of our free content channels, it only seems logical that the depth of targeting will continue. I think this offers a much fuller experience that will only benefit the user.

See you at AdTech!

The Year Of Mobile...

Don' believe it?

The Modern Day Handshake

I have grown up in the digital era. I have never known a time where you could start a friendship or a business relationship by only one of two ways; in person or by phone (I guess I could mention snail mail but for sake of argument I’m leaving it out). My social and professional circles have developed through Facebook and LinkedIn friend requests, and Facebook’s latest concoction is only adding to the chaos.

“People You May Know” is the latest fature to show up on the post- login page for Facebook. Random blasts from the past or complete strangers have begun to popup to encourage what I’m calling the “modern day handshake.” A friend request through either Facebook or LinkedIn is now a fully acceptable form of reaching out to someone you haven’t spoken to in a while, or someone you’ve wanted to introduce yourself to. A recent flurry of friend requests from people I went to elementary school with brought up this question while I ran my ass off in a recent football training session (the European kind):

Are these friend requests meaningless?



More than half of the friend requests I get constitute the beginning and end of these relationships. You get a friend request from someone you haven’t seen in years. You confirm the request. You look at their profile. Maybe gawk at some photos. Then that’s it. It’s over. We have just had our reunion and we are through.

So what is that? What did we just do? I’m not that old and I haven’t been in marketing for very long. My business is about connecting people. It’s about bringing people and the brands they care about together. And it’s about developing forums for people to engage with each other in new and inventive ways. But are we really getting involved with those people we reach out to? Is the goal to build the size of our contacts list, or is it to actually develop new and old friendships?

Compete Analytics just told me that in February 2008, 28.5 million unique visitors visited Facebook. I’m not saying these millions of people are heartless, vapid, or shallow. I’m just saying there was once another way to do this, before my generation took over. I use Facebook every day, and I don’t we propose we shut it down and start over.

In my opinion, Facebook is supposed to compliment a relationship. The same way we need to implement mobile advertising to start complimenting our traditional marketing programs.

I propose this: follow up that friend request with a Facebook message. You don’t even have to leave the website. I was going to suggest an email or phone call even, but it’s ok. Baby steps.