Gazettenpraat

New Product 'Amplifies' Blogs
By Ross Fadner
Staff Writer
Monday, June 28, 2004

Mediapost

Today marks the launch of a new consumer application that will allow Web users to aggregate online content and create personalized Web pages without knowing Java, HTML, or XML. Think rich media blogging, or blogging taken to the next level.

The process, created by Amplify, a New York-based startup, revolves around "amps," the enabling software that allows users to select content they want to save or share. After downloading Amplify's free software, a companion toolbar appears at the top of the Web browse--allowing users to search for, collect, save, and share any Web content that appeals to them.

Amplify's search engine is powered by Yahoo! and Teoma. It displays regular search results, as well as amp search results. When users visit sites and find content they like--including pictures, text, flash, audio, and video--they can keep it by clicking the amp icon and adding it to their "My Amps" list of amps within the toolbar. Each amp can hold up to 25 pieces of content.

Consumer amps will also be fully customizable. Like blogs, users will be able to write whatever they wish within them, but they will also be able to manipulate the size and frame of any photo or video content, and change the colors and fonts of each page.

A user's amps can be published to www.amplify.com--Amplify's blogging community page--or saved, depending on the user's preference. Amps can also be shared as a link with anyone through email, instant messaging, blogs, message boards, and chat rooms, regardless of whether or not users have Amplify software installed.

The Amplify blog is a community site that divides amps by vertical categories including shopping, politics, travel, entertainment, and finance.

Amplify CEO Eric Goldstein, an ex-lawyer, founded the company on the principle that the Web, for all its interactivity, doesn't allow users to save content and create personal Web pages easily. Goldstein says he wanted to make the Internet a more accessible environment for the average user.

Goldstein says amps are so viral by nature that he expects the product's chief marketing platform to be itself. Since the software is free, Amplify hopes to make money through behaviorally targeted advertising. Last Friday, the New York-based company secured a deal to enter 24/7 Real Media's network of more than 800 Web publishers.

Goldstein notes that the act of "amping," as it's referred to, empowers users to choose the content they care about--thus revealing a lot about their interests. This, he believes, will be of particular interest to 24/7's advertisers. According to Ari Bluman, SVP distribution and operations at 24/7 Real Media, "24/7 will be a technology client to Amplify serving ads across their properties and within amps." Bluman says the primary formats will be graphical banners and leaderboards, with the future possibility of rich media. He notes that no personally identifiable information will be used to serve ads.

Bluman says that 24/7 was attracted to the entertainment/customization aspect of the Amplify product. He adds that the viral nature of the platform will be attractive to advertisers, as well as a "resourceful usership" that creates its own content. "Each user is clearly defining their specific interests online," he notes, adding, "their verticals match our verticals," so it was a smart match.

Amplify is also talking with companies about cross-promotional opportunities. Goldstein says the company is currently discussing a promotional deal with "a major record label" that will involve rewards for the most popular amps about certain bands or music sectors.

Goldstein acknowledges that the fledgling company will have to create a mass presence in order to open up more advertising inventory. He says that he wants amps to become "the second layer of search," adding a new element of personalization. "The idea is to continue the evolution of what people can do on the Web," Goldstein says.

How Do You Know You're Targeting the Right Audience?
By Omar Tawakol
senior vice president of marketing, Revenue Science
Monday, June 28, 2004

Subscribe Now
Send to Friend
Printer Friendly
Reply To Editor
Request Reprint
Add to My List


I have been entertained by the fact that, while plenty of vendors promise targeting capabilities, few actually provide a simple way of assessing whether or not their targeting works. An advertiser's question to a publisher is, "If I pay more for a targeted campaign from you how much of the campaign was delivered to an in-target audience?" The good news is that the answer to this question is an extremely simple metric that is already part of the industry vernacular.

Before I give you the answer, I'd like to suggest that there are three key criteria for any good quality metric, specifically, Comparability, Ease, and Consistency.

Value Comparability: Advertisers should be able to use the metric to easily compare two audiences. The comparison has to correlate directly to economic value.

Ease of Use: A workable metric must be well-accepted and understood, as well as simple and inexpensive to deploy and validate.

Consistency: A metric must mean the same thing every time it is used. If the metric fails this test, it no longer allows comparison.

The prospect of having a clear-cut quality metric makes some publishers nervous. They think that by staying away from a metric that compares them with competitors, they can get more money from the market. The opposite has been proven to be true. Economists have fondly named this phenomenon Grenshaw's Law. The Law suggests that when there is no metric of quality, low quality drives out higher quality and price becomes the only deciding factor. This is bad news for quality media properties that want to leverage their high-value audience and bad news for advertisers that want to reach the highest-quality target.

So what should a behavioral targeting metric measure? Behavioral targeting promises that it will get you the right people, so we need a metric that tells you if that promise is fulfilled. Fortunately, we don't have to create something out of whole cloth and then educate everyone about it because there's a metric that's been used successfully for a long time: Audience Composition. In the offline print world ad dollars are allocated using audience composition numbers. In the online world, agencies use audience composition when allocating ad dollars at the site level. That's why Nielsen exists.

Knowing composition allows advertisers to make qualitative comparisons that show them that while Wall Street Journal, Slashdot and USA Today are all news publications, technology geeks read Slashdot, travelers read USA Today and C-level executives read the Wall Street Journal. Since marketers already ask about the composition of the site, why don't they ask about the composition of an audience within the site?

So let's check and see if Audience Composition meets our three criteria.

Does it allow value comparability? Yes, because it takes the context of the site's audience into consideration. In fact, it directly correlates to economic value since you can calculate cost per thousand targets by dividing CPM by composition.

Is it easy to use? It's being used everyday in both offline and online media and can be measured by a variety of vendors.

Is it consistent? Audience Composition always measures the same characteristic of the audience being purchased. A 35 percent audience composition for a 5+ business traveler is conclusive, regardless of how the audience was constructed or which site was used. That's the point of a metric.

So if it's so simple and clear, why is there a debate? Some in the industry are proposing a naming standard for the inputs of an audience, as opposed to a quality metric that measures the output. The idea being proposed is that if we use standard nomenclature we could all agree that an "active traveler" is someone who clicks on the travel section 10 times in the past month. In other words, rather than apply a quality metric to the resulting audience, they suggest we should agree on how to name the pieces that go in to defining the audience. Let's apply the criteria from above to see how well this works.

First, can you compare the value of two audiences using the naming method? The answer is "no," and here is why. Site A and Site B both define "active travelers" as visiting their travel page 10 times a month so advertisers know they are getting the same audience, right? Wrong, because if the Site A's Composition of "active travelers is just 2 percent and Site B's is 50 percent, the in-target audience from site B is 25 times larger than site A's.

Which would you buy? Number of visits doesn't correlate to quality across sites.

On to the next criteria: Is the naming standard easy to use? Again the answer is "no." When you use algorithms that look at dozens of attributes in the design of an audience, describing that set of inputs can be very complex. Finally, does the application of a naming standard create consistent quality? Again the answer is "no." Just because someone calls something they sell you "good" does not necessarily make it so. If Slashdot and USAToday both define an audience of 10 time business travelers, the only thing in common between those groups would be their name.

Applying the simple criteria of comparability, ease, and consistency shows that Audience Composition provides an excellent metric for behavioral targeting quality. There are precedents for this approach in other industries such as the financial industry where risk grades judge the quality of a loan population and allow you to compare two pools of loans. Rather than agreeing on how to name the hundreds of attributes that define a given loan group, the industry came up with a simple grade that describes the risk of the pool. Standards are made to help buyers make value decisions and hence they must describe the quality of the output not the complexity of the inputs!

Let me be clear. Audience Composition is not meant to replace post-campaign evaluation such as conversions or brand metrics. There will still be questions about whether the campaign was compelling, whether people clicked on it, and whether it resulted in dollars that are influenced by the ad creative and other issues. But that is not the task at hand. As Randy Kilgore, the Vice President of Advertising at the Wall Street Journal Online says, "Behavioral targeting allows advertisers to precisely target the audience they are trying to reach with the message they are trying to convey and Audience Composition is the simple and clear way to show how precise that targeting is."

Mediapost

Changing Media Consumption
By Seana Mulcahy
'); As most you know, I'm on the Executive Committee of an organization called the Boston Interactive Media Association (BIMA). The other night, I moderated an event of great panelists: Perry Allison, VP, Strategic Accounts, Bolt Media; Louis Jones, Executive Vice President & Managing Director, Media Contacts; Kara Kramer, Director of Brand Research, AOL; Charles Smith, VP, Publisher Sales, TACODA Systems; and Beth Taylor, VP/Director, Digitas.

I'd like to give you a peek inside the event. In a word - clutter, clutter, and clutter. Today, more than ever, digital marketers, advertisers, and service and tools providers are challenged with how to appropriately and effectively gain exposure from advertisements. The average consumer is exposed to thousands of advertising messages daily - online, TV, radio, newspapers, over their mobile phones, taxi tops, billboards... the list goes on. An increasingly stronger "digital influence" beyond these mediums is putting the consumer in control of what they experience and when they do it.

Several terms and phrases popped up. One in particular was "audience centric targeting." In essence it is not just knowing who your audience is; it's knowing where they are and what they are doing when they get there. For instance, your target could be busy mothers. You represent a consumer packaged goods company. You might advertise on a site with quick recipes. You might even have a printable grocery list alongside the recipe.

Like any other panel, behavioral targeting was mentioned. Charles Smith from Tacoda seemed to think it was the, "Flavor of the month" term. Beth Taylor argued that it's been around forever. Louis Jones put it best when he said, "Let's face it, we've always been trying to figure out how to target our audiences."

The panel agreed that media consumption was changing fast and furious. There is a genuine need to stay ahead of the curve on the sliding landscape.

Beth Taylor and Perry Allison discussed the Gillette Venus campaign that targets girls. Both recognized that no girl would ever look anything up online about shaving. The challenge was to be in environments where these young women are and promote the razors in a fun way. Digitas created a powerful concept that revolved around revealing versus removal. Shaving was illustrated as beauty.

Venus was a hit in environments such as Bolt. Girls there are so connected. They have multiple buddy lists, forums, and viral elements. All these elements allow for heavy brand interaction. Louis told us a bit about Royal Caribbean and Choice Hotels. He said his team searched for contextually relevant opportunities. They also recognized there are different types of travel, timeframes, multiple offers, and a heck of a lot of clutter.

The panel agreed that brand interaction is key. Kara Kramer puts together research for the sales teams. She said she always has an armory of information in regard to brand interaction on AOL. Charles said Tacoda helps put such data in various buckets in order to place a value on brand interaction. He warned the audience not to get hung up in the numbers. The entire panel nodded their heads. Beth said, "It's finding the appropriate amount of information before hitting a wall."


Louis said its about Interaction, Value and Aspiration... and the love of the brand. A cool example Perry cited was a campaign for Chicklets gum. Bolt users can design their own Chicklet and send it (virtually) to a friend. That is true brand interaction.

Whether its shaving, going on a cruise, or chewing gum, the common thread to success of these campaigns was staying ahead of the curve. Behavioral and contextual marketing is important but don't overlook the obvious: It's the right message in the right place and the right time. How do you feel about changing media consumption? Do you have any tips and tricks to share with us? If so, post to the Spin Board.


Mediapost

GUERRILLAS KNOW THE AWESOME POWER OF REFERRALS

As the guerrilla knows very well, it costs a lot of money to turn up a new customer. That same guerrilla knows that the cost is greatly diminished if the names of potential new customers are supplied at virtually no cost. For that reason, the guerrilla relies on his greatest possible source of new customers. It should come as no secret that this source is old customers.

OBTAINING REFERRALS IS EASIER THAN YOU THINK.

Ever hear of the relationship ladder? Each rung is a customer leading up to another customer, and then another -- all the way to ther top. And better yet, there is no top. The rungs are endless, if you go about things in the right way.

And the right way is simply to ask for names. Just ask your existing customers for the names of colleagues, friends, or relatives who may benefit from your product or service -- or who may even benefit from getting on your mailing list. I wrote of this glorious method of increasing your profits last year. But because of the gratifying response to my article and the fact that obtaining referrals is so incredibly overlooked, I want to expand your knowledge of this underutilized guerrilla marke ting weapon.

The whole idea of asking for referrals is most closely associated with life insurance companies, no slouches when it comes to maximizing profits. Here are several tips on generating successful referrals:

* There are several right times to ask for a referral. Old customers, although the best source of new customers, are not the only source. The first source, surprisingly, is after a prospect has not purchased. Maybe that prospect didn't buy from you for a valid reason. But perhaps he or she will recommend your offering to someone. In fact, if you did a good job relating to the prospect, that same person may feel guilty about not buying what you're selling and he can assuage his guilt by givi ng you names and helping you out with other than a purchase. But you won't get it unless you ask -- and the time ask is after the prospect has said "no."

* Another right time to ask for a referral is right after your prospect has purchased. After all, the person is now very enthusiastic about your product or service and you can use the momentum of that enthusiasm to get you the names of others who stand to gain by doing business with you. So the best time to ask for those names is after the prospect has said "yes."

* Still another fruitful time to get the names of potential new customers is after you've delivered. Whether you delivered a product or service, at your place of business or the prospect's place, the benefits of your offering come shining through -- and you've got an ideal springboard for reminding your customer of the importance of their referrals.

* Even more opportunities to mine for referral gold are the times you have a personal contact with your customer. Don't do it more than three or four times a year -- but on the other hand, don't do it less. You've told them how important referrals are. You've stayed in constant contact with them, hopefully. You've told your customers you practice follow-up. And if they know you'll be asking for names, they'll have them at the tip of their consciousness, wanting to give them to you and wan ting you to succeed.

* The way to ask for referrals is with complete honesty. Just say that referrals can be very valuable to your business and that you need the person's help. Tell them that as referrals can benefit your business, you know that your business can benefit the customer's associates and acquaintances. Then, ask for names -- just a few names to make it easy on your prospect. Giving you three, four or five names is not that big a deal.

* The way to be sure you'll get the names you want is with prompters. Prompters are devices, in the forms of body language and questions that help elicit the names you seek. For example, if you ask for the names of three referrals, take out a notebook and a pen, then look down, pen all set to write down the names that will be forthcoming. This shows that you fully expect to get the names, and your prospect will furnish them for you. Other prompters are questions such as:

-- Who are your three closest friends?
-- Who do you know that is successful in business?
-- Who do you respect and admire?
-- Who do you know who might benefit from your offering?

Write down those names on a separate sheet of paper in your notebook and keep writing till the customer stops giving names. Then, return to the first name and ask the person's address, phone number, occupation, hobbies, and anything else pertinent to your business.

* The best method for continuing to get referrals is to thank the referrer and keep him up to date on the progress you're making. You might even reward the customer with a special thank-you note or a small gift. Make it a nicer gift if the referral turns into a customer.

Jay

HERE'S THE LATEST OUTLOOK, ALL FIVE YEARS OF IT -- It's that time of year again: outlook season. And smack dab in the middle of a series of revised forecasts issued recently by Universal McCann, Monitor-Plus and CMR and ones later this year by Veronis Suhler Stevenson and MEDIA magazine, comes one released today by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Consistent with the other media industry seers, PwC anticipates a relatively healthy rate of expansion for the media industry overall and advertising in particular. PwC, which touts its version as the "industry's only five-year global forecast," now expects the worldwide entertainment and media industry to expand at a rate of 6.3 percent annually through 2008. Interestingly, the fastest growing medium in the mix isn't any of the traditional media, nor the Internet, or even wireless media technologies. According to PwC, it's video games, which will see spending increase at a rate of 20.1 percent over the next five years, compounded annually of course. In fact, the consultancy anticipates that the global video game marketplace will reach $55.6 billion by 2008, a point at which it will be poised for even bigger growth as new wireless and broadband distribution channels expand its marketplace, displacing the PC game marketplace, and slowing the relative growth of console-based games.
As vital as the video game forecast is, it's largely a non-advertising factor. And the fastest growing ad-supported medium, not surprisingly, is the Internet. Online ad spending will rise at an annual rate of 12.7 percent through 2008, when it will reach a projected $18.9 billion, according to the firm.

"Paid-search and rich media propelled spending in 2003," said Wayne Jackson, global leader of PricewaterhouseCoopers' Entertainment & Media Practice, noting that Internet ad spending actually rose 22.9 percent in 2003. "The growing number of broadband households along with expanding e-commerce makes the Internet more attractive to advertisers," he noted. By comparison, he said total worldwide ad spending would expand at a relatively modest rate of 5.2 percent annually, reaching $412 billion by 2008. That's considerably less than the half trillion mark Universal McCann forecaster Bob Coen projects the global ad economy would reach in 2005, but the two prognosticators likely are looking at different definitions of what constitutes advertising.

Advertising aside, PwC agrees with others forecasters that there are some fundamental changes taking place in the infrastructure of the entertainment and media industry, especially as new distribution channels such as broadband Internet access and wireless communications. The report projects that the number of broadband households will grown 31.3 percent annual to more than 300 million worldwide in 2008. This will in turn fuel growth in music download services and CD burning technologies, testing legal issues and business models for the recording industry.

"The Internet has evolved into a vital distribution channel, despite piracy issues faced by the music and movie industries. In 2003, licensed online music services began acquiring paying customers, showing that consumers will pay for high-quality entertainment that is easily accessible online. We expect to see the expansion of digital and online subscription services not only begin to lift the music industry later in the forecast period, but also positively impact segments such as film, video games and business information," projects PwC's Jackson.

Five Reasons Why Ad Agencies Hate Search Engine Marketing
by John Tawadros, Tuesday, June 29, 2004

TRADITIONAL AD AGENCIES HAVE DISCOVERED that search engine marketing is beguilingly difficult. Not only is it more complicated than it seems, but it's surprisingly difficult to eek out a profit doing it.

Companies offering keyword bidding tools have lulled some agencies into a false sense of confidence. "Our bidding tool will make search engine marketing effortless," they were told.

What these companies didn't tell the agencies was that they still needed search engine marketing expertise to use these tools effectively to maximize their clients' results.

As a result, many big, traditional ad agencies-and even interactive agencies-hate search engine marketing. Here are the top five reasons why:

1. Achieving profitability in managing clients' paid search advertising is extremely difficult: If you don't use a bid management tool, and if each of your customers doesn't spend in excess of $50K per month on paid search advertising, you won't make money. Period. Trouble is, even many of the large client companies who employ agencies cannot justify spending more than $3K to $10K per month. The conversions aren't there; the keyword query frequency is not there.

Charging a service fee of 20 percent (a typical pricing model for PPC management) on top of a monthly PPC spend of $3K is peanuts for the time necessary to do a good job. But ad agency clients are clamoring for search marketing: they know it works; they know they have to be in the game; and they want their agencies' help. But trying to do SEM is breaking the agencies and they know it.

2. A shortage of skilled SEM practitioners: Employees with even a few years of search engine marketing experience are hard to find and expensive! Most are groomed at search-engine-marketing-only firms. Without experienced staff, an internal training program won't succeed. Without an in-house training program, you won't develop experienced staff-presenting a catch-22.

3. Even "poaching" experts cannot produce superior results: If an agency lures away a few ex-SEM-firm types, they join the agency ill-equipped to deliver results. Much of the intellectual property and knowledge that made them successful were contained in the tools that the SEM specialty firm developed in-house. Most, if not all, of the tools that made these employees efficient, speedy, and successful are not commercially available.

SEM firms have spent the last six to seven years building proprietary tools that provide enormous leverage to staff. These tools evolve and grow with the organization, and because they are enterprise-based application suites, they don't leave with the employee.

4. SEM is so complex it requires singular focus. Performing effective SEM requires practitioners to deal with 10 or so search properties who are always changing database partners, algorithms, PPC bidding rules, and paid inclusion programs. Keeping up on it all requires a dedicated focus. There's a significant learning curve every month. Most agencies are not built to manage that much change, that much data, and constantly evolving best practices, strategies and tactics.

5. SEM requires a commitment to research: The biggest breakthroughs in process improvement come through data intensive research and analysis of linguistics and search engine user behavior. This requires collection of data and results for millions of visitors in a variety of verticals with a variety of online marketing objectives for their sites. In the same way that most agencies didn't build direct marketing capabilities in the 1970s, because the practice was too data dependent and mathematically based, most agencies do not want to be bothered with the ongoing research and analytics necessary to make SEM effective.

With all this being said, some agencies have decided to partner with SEM firms and are letting the SEM firms have direct client contact. Why? Because there is too much education required for the agency to deliver the work required and yet the agency wants to successfully meet the demands of its clients.

But most agencies still hate search engine marketing. So they can curse the wind or adjust their sails.

John Tawadros is vice president of search engine marketing firm, iProspect where he is responsible for the company's client service and technology operations, as well as new product development. Tawadros works closely with blue chip clients including American Express, Ford Motor Co. and Sharp Electronics to drive online marketing successes. He is a frequent speaker on search engine marketing and is the author of "Tawadros Tid-Bits," a column of practical search engine marketing advice in iProspect's own monthly newsletter, the Search Marketing Advisor©.

Search Insider for Tuesday, June 29, 2004: http://www.mediapost.com/dtls_dsp_SearchInsider.cfm?fnl=040629

What's The Buzz?

A young Boston-based marketing agency has put together a nationwide army of just plain folks who stand ready to give your product great word of mouth--for a price. One caveat: Schlockmeisters need not apply.

From: Issue 82 May 2004, Page 76
By: Linda Tischler

In Alabama, Bzzagent ArnoldGinger123 buttonholed her probation officer to chat up a tush-flattering new brand of jeans. In Illinois, Bzzagent GeminiDreams spent a family Christmas party extolling the features of Monster.com's new networking site. And, in an especially moving final tribute in New Jersey, Bzzagent Karnj buzzed her grandpa into the great beyond with a round of Anheuser World Select beer at the old gent's wake. "He would have enjoyed the AWS unstoppably!" she wrote in a report to the company that had dispatched her to generate publicity on the brew's behalf.

Companies have long recognized that word of mouth is one of the most potent weapons in a marketer's arsenal. The trick has been to harness that power in a disciplined, strategic way. A two-year-old Boston company, BzzAgent LLC, aims to do just that; it has assembled a nationwide volunteer army of natural-born buzzers and will channel their chatter toward products and services they deem authentically worth talking about. "Our goal was to find a way to capture honest word of mouth," says David Balter, BzzAgent's founder, "and to build a network that would turn passionate customers into brand evangelists."

BzzAgent's method is simple: Once a client signs on, the company searches its database for "agents" matching the demographic and psychographic profile of target customers of the product or service. Those folks are offered a chance to sign up for a buzz campaign. Volunteers receive a sample product and a training manual for buzz-creating strategies. These may include talking about the product to friends, chatting up salespeople at retail outlets, or emailing influential people on the product's behalf. Each time an agent completes an activity, he is expected to file a report describing the nature of the buzz and its effectiveness. BzzAgent coaches respond with encouragement and feedback on additional techniques.

The company itself is a testament to the power of buzz. Starting with an initial assignment for 300 agents--mostly friends and friends of friends--to generate buzz for an author for Penguin Group publishers, Balter has built a community now 25,000 strong. And these aren't just mall rats on cell phones. Some 65% are over 25, 60% are women, and two are Fortune 500 CEOs. They've buzzed products as diverse as Estee Lauder facial masks, Lee jeans, Rock Bottom Restaurants, and a book by Fast Company columnist Seth Godin.

Members--who sign up at the rate of 30 to 100 per day--are typically attracted by the chance to be the first to know about new stuff. Take Rhode Island's Derek Archambault, an early recruit who boasts the low number of Bzzagent #36. He admits he's the kind of guy who just enjoys spreading the gospel about cool new CDs, books, movies, or products. When he heard about BzzAgent, he was instantly hooked. "I thought, Wow! I can do what I'm doing anyway, get some points, and score some free stuff."

While agents do get to keep the new products they promote, and can earn points redeemable for extra loot (typically books, CDs, and promotional items) by filing detailed reports, the network was designed to discourage folks from signing up just to get freebies. Prospective agents must first answer a questionnaire revealing their age, education, interests, and income. Once selected for a campaign, they're asked to read a document on buzz-creating strategies, then report back on their activities by filing online reports. "We made the system just hard enough so that if all you're doing is looking for a free pair of jeans, you're never going to last," says Balter. No cash--or even coupons--ever changes hands.

That didn't discourage Steve Cook, vice president of worldwide strategic marketing at Coca-Cola, from joining. As a marketer, he was intrigued by a tool that helps passionate consumers engage with a product. As a civilian, he was as curious as the next guy to get the inside dish on the next big thing. He's now considering using BzzAgent to generate news and awareness among Coke's core heavy users.

The service's appeal, he says, is its authenticity. "What I like is that Bzzagents aren't scripted," he says. "They say, 'Here's the information; if you believe in it, say whatever you think.' " That distinguishes the company from promoters in, for example, the spirits industry, which has long employed "leaners" to shill brands at a bar. "That type of marketing tool has a very short shelf life," he says. "It's not genuine."

Still, some clients are a little shocked to discover that Bzzagents may not be universally enchanted with their products, and aren't shy about saying so. A large cable company, for example, hired BzzAgent to promote a video game channel. Trouble was, serious gamers thought the games were seriously lame. "Why isn't your community faking it?" Balter says the company demanded. "That's the whole point," he replied. "We can help a product that has value. We can't help a product that's schlock."

The company ultimately used Bzzagents' suggestions to retool the game channel. And Balter and his team learned a lesson: Research the product before committing to a campaign. BzzAgent now rejects about 80% of companies that seek to hire it, and refuses to do campaigns for politicians, religious groups, or products it finds offensive. "We wouldn't do anything for Smith & Wesson," says Bzzagent Jon O'Toole, who manages a team of five coaches who wrangle the daily barrage of BzzReports, email, and instant messages.

Hiring this hive of buzzers doesn't come cheap. Deploying 1,000 agents on a 12-week campaign typically runs about $85,000, exclusive of product samples. But results can be impressive. According to Rick Pascocello, VP of advertising and promotions for the Penguin Group, the Bzzagent community managed to revive The Art of Shen Ku , a book that had gotten lost in the nonstop news blitz following September 11. A year after publication, backed by a preholiday BzzAgent schmoozefest, it sold two-and-a-half times its original printing, a near miracle for a backlist title. And Rock Bottom Restaurants saw sales grow by $1.2 million in one quarter after 400 members of its frequent-diner program became Bzzagents.

Still, some companies are having a hard time figuring out where this technique fits in their marketing budgets. Is it a media buy or a research tool? And how do you measure its return on investment? That kind of talk exasperates Balter. "We say, you want ROE from us: return on evangelism. This is a different beast. Let word of mouth create for you, let it do its thing, let us tell you what's happening, but don't try to compare buzz to a line item on your television spend because it will never work."

Senior writer Linda Tischler (ltischler@fastcompany.com ) buzzes--on her own--about books, movies, and bargains.

What Comes First: Ads or PR?

Advertising is a hammer, and public relations is the nail, according to marketing guru Al Ries, author of The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR. What does that mean?

More than 50 advertising insiders and public relations executives found it important enough to scribble down these words during Ries' speech at Business Wire's Integrated Marketing Conference held at Reuters headquarters in New York's Times Square.

The translation: PR gives a product or brand credibility or engrains the brand's worth into the brains of consumers, while advertising further reinforces that credibility, Ries said. A company should put in the nail (PR), then take the hammer (advertising) to drive in the message.

Before listening to Ries, I never really gave any thought to the notion of which should come first: advertising or PR? Richard Badler, head of corporate communications at Unisys, backed Ries's notion during the conference. Badler shared with the audience a mission statement he wrote for his worldwide team that says, "Create and implement cutting-edge communications that drives the business forward."

It does make sense for a company launching a new brand to get the buzz out on the product through press releases, media events or rely on good old word of mouth instead of spending millions on an advertising campaign that may not give you the returns you expected.

One good example, Ries said, is Anheuser-Busch, whose marketing wins the top advertising awards yearly. Remember the Whazzup?! Campaign that had everyone, even non-beer drinkers saying the phrase? However, these creative ads have hardly helped bolster sales at the King of Beers. Another example is the cute chihuahua from the Taco Bell ads that would say "Te quiero Taco Bell?" The dog was great, but the sales at the restaurant remained lackluster, according to Ries.

Some companies focus more on advertising than on giving consumers a clue about the product. An even bigger problem is with so many ads on the air already, it s hard for one to really make an impression. For me, I can maybe recall two or three recent ads, but that doesn t mean I have any plans to buy any of the products. The answer to the dilemma though as it was explained at the conference is for companies to do a better job at using public relations to help build the brands and using advertising to reinforce the message that s been publicized already.

How is PR treated at your company? Do you agree with PR being first before the advertising? What s the solution?

Posted by Maxine Clayton at June 29, 2004
Fast Company

P2P : la Sacem belge s’attaque aux FAI

La Sabam, homologue belge de la Sacem, innove dans la lutte contre le piratage. Après les procès contre les éditeurs de logiciels du type Kazaa, après ceux à l'encontre d'internautes, la Sabam a décidé de s'en prendre cette fois aux fournisseurs d'accès, et c'est Tiscali Belgique qui en fait les frais.

Le 24 juin dernier, la Sabam a intenté une action en cessation civile devant le Tribunal de première instance de Bruxelles contre le fournisseur de services Internet Tiscali, coupable, selon la Société des auteurs, de proposer l'accès à des réseaux de peer-to-peer. "Comme ailleurs, le marché du disque souffre en Belgique : cela fait plusieurs années qu'il baisse de 10 %, et le peer-to-peer est en partie responsable, explique Thierry Dachelet, directeur de la communication de la Sabam. Nous avons observés les mesures prises pour endiguer le piratage à l'étranger, et nous avons conclu que rien de ce qui a été fait jusqu'à présent n'a été efficace. C'est pour cela que nous attaquons un fournisseur d'accès en souhaitant que la décision fasse jurisprudence."

Pour expliquer les raisons de son action, la Sabam invoque la directive européenne "Société de l'Information" qui sous entend une certaine responsabilité technique des fournisseurs d'accès. "Cette directive indique que les FAI ont la capacité technique de mettre un terme au piratage. Nous demandons donc aux FAI de procéder aux mesures nécessaires. Et comme Tiscali n'a pas réagi à notre mise en demeure, nous avons entamé une procédure devant le tribunal civil", explique Thierry Dachelet.

Pour le moment Tiscali est le seul fournisseur d'accès belge visé par la Sabam. Si le jugement lui donnait raison, la Sabam prévoit de poursuivre tous les opérateurs qui ne couperaient pas l'accès aux réseaux peer-to-peer. Dans sa démarche, la Sabam ne fait pas de distinction entre contenus licites et contenus illicites sur les réseaux P2P.

Hors, seuls les contenus échangés illégalement sur ces réseaux peuvent faire l'objet de poursuite, pas le système d'échange qui en soit est parfaitement légal. Si le tribunal allait dans ce sens, cela reviendrait à interdire de fait l'utilisation des réseaux peer-to-peer en Belgique. C'est désormais au tribunal de Bruxelles de se prononcer sur le fond. La Sabam attend une décision d'ici deux à trois mois.

Frantz GRENIER, JDN

Régies publicitaires indépendantes : le goût de la revanche

Après trois années éprouvantes, suite au retournement du marché publicitaire online, les régies Internet indépendantes reprennent enfin leur souffle. Deux d'entre elles, Numériland et Ad Pepper, indiquent même avoir atteint la rentabilité l'année dernière. Et pour Hi-Media et Adlink, l'objectif de rentabilité devrait être atteint sur l'exercice en cours. Seul Real Media France, qui deviendra 24/7 Real Media à compter du 1er juillet, est moins disert sur le sujet. La régie préfère communiquer sur la rentabilité globale des filiales européennes du groupe Real Media, sans s'arrêter sur les chiffres de la branche française.

Cette renaissance pour les régies publicitaires online indépendantes ne s'est pas faite sans effort, sans réorganisation. Pour atteindre ces résultats, et lutter à armes égales avec les grands portails et les moteurs de recherche, les régies indépendantes ont largement diversifié leurs activités au cours de ces dernières années. Un processus qui, schématiquement, s'est fait selon deux grandes voies possibles.

Première méthode : la diversification horizontale. Certaines régies indépendantes ont choisi d'intégrer des activités de marketing direct online, en raison de la rentabilité supposée rapide de ce modèle. Hi-Media a été le premier à se lancer sur ce créneau. Aujourd'hui, ses activités s'organisent autour de trois pôles.

En tête de liste, l'activité de régie publicitaire, qui représente toujours l'essentiel des revenus d'Hi-Media (60 % de son chiffre d'affaires en 2003). Suivent le marketing direct via la collecte et la commercialisation d'adresses e-mails (30 % de ses revenus) et, plus curieusement, une plate-forme de micro-paiement (10 % de son chiffre d'affaires). "Notre objectif est d'offrir aux éditeurs de sites une solution globale pour accroître leurs revenus, tant sur le plan publicitaire que sur le plan commercila, souligne Cyril Zimmermann, PDG de Hi-Media. Ce qui explique qu'à côté de la publicité et de l'e-mailing, nous proposons également une plate-forme de micro-paiements."

Ad-Pepper a adopté ce même modèle de diversification en 2003, mais en poussant l'exercice encore plus loin. Son activité de marketing direct online couvre aussi bien l'organisation de concours et de jeux pour collecter des propects qualifiés, que la génération de leads vers les sites clients, de l'e-mailing ciblé ou bien du marketing relationel via des 300 newsletters partenaires. "Le marché du marketing direct dispose d'un réel potentiel, estime Etienne Nael, directeur du développement d'Ad Pepper France. D'ailleurs, cette activité représente aujourd'hui 5 % de l'activité du groupe et 60 % du volume d'affaires d'Ad Pepper France."

Dans cette logique de diversification horizontale, Numériland fait un peu office de précurseur. Lla régie a diversifié ses activités vers la vente d'espaces publicitaires au clic dès novembre 2001 grâce au rachat de Comclick.

C'est également durant cette même année qu'elle a pris le virage du marketing direct online en proposant aux éditeurs de commercialiser leurs bases d'adresses e-mails et leur base de téléphone portable. Une diversification qu'Alexandre Stopnicki, PDG de Numériland, compte encore poursuivre. "Nous envisageons très sérieusement de reprendre cette année notre politique de croissance externe et de faire l'acquisition de sociétés spécialisées dans des métiers voisins au notre", indique-t-il.

Pourtant, ce modèle de diversification horizontale n'a pas séduit toutes les régies. Plus prudente, Real Media France a préféré élargir ses compétences dans les métiers de la publicité, en approfondissant son expertise en matière de services et de conseils grâce aux développement d'outils technologiques. Place ici à la diversification verticale, la seconde voie possible.

Depuis 2003, Real Media France a multiplié les innovations, parmi lesquelles Insight SE, un outil qui permet d'analyser les résultats des campagnes sur les moteurs de recherche. La régie devrait également lancer, dès la rentrée, une nouvelle version d'Open AdStream permettant d'analyser le comportement de l'internaute à l'égard d'une publicité. "Ces outils technologiques très pointus, nous permettent d'offrir plus de services à nos clients et de faire évoluer notre métier, explique Amaury Delloye, directeur commercial de la régie. Parallèlement, ils apportent de l'expertise et nous ont permis de faire la différence sur le marché des régies."

Sans surprise, Adlink, dont l'un des actionnaires principal est DoubleClick, a suivi sensiblement le même chemin. Même si la régie interactive réalise quelques campagnes marketing, celles-ci ne représentent pas, pour l'instant, un axe stratégique pour la société. Adlink préfère développer son expertise dans l'e-publicité via quelques innovations qualitatives.

La première d'entre elles est le lancement, en mai dernier, de Net Pro, une offre publicitaire ciblant les professionnels et regroupant cinquante sites de presse segmentés en quatre thématiques. Cette offre est accompagnée du lancement d'un nouveau format, "le spot", et d'outils de géolocalisation. "Notre objectif est de faire comprendre aux annonceurs, grâce à une offre de qualité et une totale transparence sur les prix, l'apport de ce média, la richesse des contenu et comment, ils peuvent l'utiliser", insiste Paul Biondi, directeur général de Adlink France.

Reste une question, centrale : ces diversifications, verticales ou horizontales, suffiront-elles pour faire face au mouvement continu d'internalisation des régies publicitaires ? Les principaux acteurs indépendants du marché semblent le croire. La plupart d'entre eux affichent de fortes croissances sur le début 2004. Adlink, par exemple, annonce une augmentation de 190 % de son volume d'affaires entre le premier trimestre 2004 et le premier trimestre 2003, tandis que qu'Hi-Média affiche 70 % de croissance sur la même période.

Une évolution qui, selon Alexandre Stopniki de Numériland, est loin d'être une simple embellie. S'il admet que la consolidation dans ce secteur n'est pas terminée, celui-ci défend les atouts des régies externes. "Aujourd'hui, avec l'expérience, quelques grands éditeurs constatent que la valeur ajoutée d'une régie interne par rapport à une régie externe, n'est peut-être pas si importante que cela. Je suis convaincu, que d'ici 2005, certains d'entre eux auront fait chemin inverse et ré-externaliseront leur régie publicitaire."

Anne-Laure BERANGER, JDN

Web Marketers Get Personal
By BOB TEDESCHI

N the 2002 movie "Minority Report," the character played by Tom Cruise, John Anderton, darted through a city in which electronic billboard advertisements spoke to him by name.

The next wave of Internet advertising could make John Andertons of us all.

Starting next week, a handful of marketers in the United States will begin sending customized ads to Internet users who land on About.com, Lycos and nytimes.com, among other Web sites. So, instead of seeing a random advertisement for the Audio Book Club or the e-travel agencies Orbitz and Priceline, you might see ads addressing you by name, mentioning some of your past purchases at the site and urging you to return.

(The idea sounds spookier than it is. Only those who have agreed to receive electronic messages from companies they have done business with will see the ads.)

Analysts and industry executives say this new approach offers online sellers a new and inexpensive way to retain customers they have spent heavily to acquire. In recent years, marketers have mainly used e-mail messages to persuade users to return, but spam filters now block many legitimate commercial e-mail messages and spam-weary consumers are less inclined to open commercial messages that make it to their in-boxes.

The company behind the new ads, Dotomi, is the brainchild of Yair Goldfinger, who created the technology that eventually became AOL's instant messaging service. According to John Federman, Dotomi's chief executive and the former publisher of PCWeek, Mr. Goldfinger developed Dotomi's "direct messaging" system as a kind of commercial analog to instant messaging.

"This lets you create, in effect, a marketer buddy list," Mr. Federman said, borrowing a phrase known to instant messaging system users as the list of people who have permission to contact them. "You're enabling a group of marketers with whom you have a stated affinity to send you electronic communications."

The publishers' technology systems will be set up to recognize when a user arrives, and will then retrieve an ad that has been built especially for that user. Just as Web sites like Amazon and others place cookies, or tiny text files containing identification numbers, onto their customers' computers so they can recognize them when they return, so, too, will Dotomi's publishing clients use cookies to spot customers of Dotomi's advertisers.

Mr. Federman said Dotomi tested the service last year in Israel, where the company's technology team is based. Customers were initially seduced by the novelty of being summoned by name to click on an ad, and they did so at a rate of 34 percent. (The average click rate for a so-called banner ad in the United States is less than a half of a percent.) Once the novelty wore thin, the click rates settled at 7 to 12 percent - still a rate many advertisers would pay dearly for.

Dotomi's 70 Israeli clients, who include Burger King, American Express and Holiday Inn, use the ads in several ways. El Al, the Israeli airline, sends out birthday messages to its customers. Other companies remind users to catch the sunset at a specific time, since they know where their customers live. Some companies send special offers.

Mr. Federman said four marketers have signed up for the service in the two months since Dotomi began offering it in the United States: Orbitz, Audio Book Club and two other advertisers whose names will not be disclosed until ads begin running. Another five, Mr. Federman said, are about to sign agreements. After a test period, Dotomi will charge $20 for every 1,000 displayed.

By comparison, some Web sites can charge $40 to $100 for 1,000 displays on popular pages - those that attract car buyers, for instance, said Charlene Li, an advertising analyst with Forrester Research. But for ads that run without regard to a highly targeted audience, publishers typically charge about $2 per 1,000.

In turn, Dotomi will pay publishers an undisclosed premium above what it would cost to place ads, in exchange for the publishers overseeing a slightly more complicated advertisement delivery method. Mr. Federman said that 70 percent of Internet users in the United States visit at least one of the publishers Dotomi has signed up to run the ads.

According to executives at MediaBay, which markets audio books and vintage radio broadcasts through its catalog and online businesses, Audio Book Club and Radio Spirits, the Dotomi ads are a cheap alternative to the company's paper-based ads. "Based on Dotomi's average click rates and our traditional rates, we believe we can lower our cost per order up to 50 percent," said Magnus Gustafsson, MediaBay's senior vice president for marketing.

The ads, which MediaBay will start running next month, will incorporate the names and past purchases of the roughly 130,000 people who have given the company its e-mail address. For instance, if a customer purchased all of John Grisham's older novels through Audio Book Club, the company will send them an ad promoting the new Grisham releases on whatever Dotomi-affiliated Web site they happen to be visiting.

Initially, not every advertisement will contain an offer created exclusively for them. Rather, MediaBay will create a handful of offers for broader customer segments - say all the people who bought Walter Isaacson's Benjamin Franklin biography - then simply affix a name to each offer and keep it ready for when a customer lands in Dotomi's Web.

MediaBay will obtain permission, via e-mail message, to send the ads. It will also promote the ads in its catalog mailings and during the checkout process on its Web sites.

Publishers, meanwhile, will welcome the chance to run Dotomi's ads, said Craig Swerdloff, the vice president for national direct marketing sales at MaxOnline, which places ads on a network of more than 1,500 Web sites like Billboard.com, CheapTickets.com, EdgarOnline and DilbertZone.com.

Because Dotomi is paying publishers more than what typical advertisers would pay, "most publishers will say 'Sure, let's see how our visitors take to this,' " Mr. Swerdloff said. "If customers start complaining, sites can always turn it down."

Even privacy-sensitive consumers will have little cause to worry, though, said Fran Maier, president of TrustE, a nonprofit privacy certification program for Web sites.

"Our concern was that people would see these ads and think, 'Oh my God, my information is being taken and used,' " she said. "But this is completely opt-in, so customers should know what they're getting.

Mr. Federman, of Dotomi, also said the company lacks the willingness or technological ability to track a consumer's behavior across different Web sites to, say, display an auto ad when it determines a customer has been surfing car-buying sites.

Analysts suggest that if Dotomi can prepare consumers well enough to minimize the spook factor of personalized ads, it could create a lucrative market. But Denise Garcia, an online advertising analyst with Gartner, a technology consulting firm, noted that marketers have to persuade a significant number of consumers to agree to the ads before it's worth their while to embark on such campaigns.

"And until a lot of marketers are doing this," Ms. Garcia said, "it won't be a huge money maker."

Sarah Fay, president of Carat Interactive, a Boston-based advertising firm, predicted that advertisers would work hard to make customers comfortable with such ads.

"Loyalty marketing is becoming one of the top ways to increase sales," Ms. Fay said. "You see it with catalogers, and how sophisticated they are about mining their e-mail databases. This gives you a new way to touch people who really have a relationship with your company."

The New York Times

Televisie ontdekt public relations

Some radical ideas on the future of TV advertising are coming not from the major ad agencies, or even from consumer marketers, but from the TV industry itself. We may forget, but TV networks, channels and program distributors are some of the biggest users of TV advertising time, as well as so-called "off-air" advertising time and space. They don't call their TV time "advertising," of course. They call it promotion. Call it whatever you like; the major TV networks now invest the equivalent of $1 billion each year in TV commercial time, according to estimates from Nielsen Monitor-Plus. That makes them bigger network TV advertisers than such consumer marketing biggies as General Motors, Procter & Gamble or Johnson & Johnson.
But the marketers of television programming are facing the same crisis of confidence over the efficacy of conventional TV advertising impressions that other consumer marketers are experiencing. The solution, according to a Frank N. Magid study released last week by PROMAX/BDA, a trade group that is the TV industry's equivalent of the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the Association of National Advertisers, relies less on conventional TV advertising impressions and more on things like public relations and ads in interactive TV programming guides.

The PR move is especially interesting for several reasons:

1) It mirrors Madison Avenue's own communications planning soul-searching and the question over how best to integrate PR into the mix;

2) It could create new competition for space in editorial outlets that other consumer products and services are vying for;

3) TV companies and brands already are some of the strongest public relations brands.

Individual TV brands (the industry and most consumers call them "shows") historically attract huge volumes of editorial coverage. Just look at the TV section of any major daily newspaper if you're still unclear.

But recently, their corporate entities have begun vying with some of America's biggest corporations for share of America's so-called "corporate news hole." While companies like Walt Disney Co. and Time Warner historically have ranked alongside the Microsofts, Wal-marts, and General Electrics of the world in terms of corporate news coverage, the PR industry was surprised during the first quarter when a major TV company jumped out of nowhere to a prime position. That company, Comcast Corp., coincidentally made a lot of news because it had made a takeover run at Walt Disney Co., but analysts at PR industry researcher Delahaye, say the news industry might have liked what it's seen.

Comcast ranked fifth in total news stories among the top 100 U.S. corporations during the quarter. It also ranked fifth in terms of Delahaye's so-called "net effect," a metric that considers the positive or negative impact news coverage has on a company's public esteem. The folks at Delahaye also have a nifty way of factoring corporate news coverage based on the relative size of a corporation. On this size-adjusted basis, Comcast actually was the dominant corporate news brand during the quarter, overshadowing all the heavyweights.

While it was the Disney bid that cast the news spotlight on Comcast, Delahaye research chief K.C. Brown says it revealed that Comcast had "all the right fundamentals" for corporate news coverage and now that the corporate news media are familiar with it, the Comcast name is likely to become "sticky" with the news media.

Pourquoi la France a besoin d’e-business
Waarom hebben kleine bedrijven e-commerce nodig?

Il en est qui font dans la politique ; d'autres mettent leur énergie au service de l'e-business. Comme Olivier Midière, ce consultant qui évolue depuis treize ans dans le conseil stratégique. Pour quelle cause combat-il ? D'une part, il veut apporter des éléments de réponse clairs à tous ceux qui s'interrogent sur la révolution technologique amorcée voilà trente ans et sur l'influence et les conséquences réelles d'Internet dans l'économie. D'autre part, il veut expliquer, argumenter et tenter de convaincre de l'impérieuse nécessité pour l'économie française d'accélérer la diffusion et l'intégration des nouvelles technologies Internet dans l'ensemble de son tissu industriel et commercial.

Souvenez-vous, au début de 2002, il avait publié coup sur coup deux volumes de sa trilogie dédiée aux affaires électroniques intitulée L'aigle, le bœuf et le e-business. Il y eut tout d'abord 2001, l'odyssée des technologies de l'information qui retraçait la dimension historique des technologies de l'information en rappelant les différentes étapes qui ont rythmé leur développement de 1970 à nos jours. Puis la dimension économique était abordée, destinée à comprendre les traits fondamentaux de la "nouvelle économie" qui émerge depuis bientôt trois décennies à l'échelle de la planète, à décrire le rôle que tient Internet et à expliquer ses conséquences sur l'organisation et le fonctionnement des entreprises à court et moyen termes : c'était 2004, l'avènement de l'e-business.

Olivier Midière avait promis d'aborder la dimension stratégique, pour démontrer pourquoi et comment favoriser la diffusion et l'intégration des technologies de l'information et du e-business dans tout le tissu industriel et commercial français. La promesse est tenue depuis peu avec la parution du volume 2007, la France en réseaux. On pourra le commander sur le site de l'auteur.

A quand une politique gouvernementale volontariste ?

On y découvre une analyse intéressante de la structure du paysage économique français, ainsi que de l'émergence de réseaux en tous genres : regroupements, coopératives, associations de fournisseurs, etc. Selon l'auteur, deux sortes d'enjeux sont liés à la pénétration des technologies de l'information dans ce tissu productif.

Les enjeux pour l'aménagement du territoire : dans les régions à faible densité industrielle, qui sont principalement situées dans la moitié sud de la France, la faible représentation des groupes et des microgroupes est aujourd'hui un réel handicap. En effet, dans ces structures industrielles, dominées par des TPE et des PE indépendantes évoluant essentiellement dans le secteur de l'artisanat, il n'existe pas de "locomotive" capable d'impulser une dynamique locale au niveau du développement de l'économie en réseaux. Or les fonctions économiques et sociales des TPE et des PE issues de l'artisanat sont essentielles pour l'aménagement du territoire rural. Une utilisation intensive des technologies Internet et une meilleure adaptation aux pratiques et aux règles de l'économie en réseau paraît fondamentale pour permettre à ces entreprises de sauvegarder l'emploi local et de dynamiser leurs activités. Avec Internet, les artisans, les travailleurs indépendants, les professions libérales, les TPE ou les PE évoluant dans ces territoires pourraient enfin s'intégrer dans tous les types de réseaux d'entreprises à l'échelle locale, nationale ou transnationale, et notamment dans des systèmes productifs locaux qui constituent aujourd'hui un atout fondamental pour l'essor ou la revitalisation des territoires.
Les enjeux sectoriels : l'autre enjeu lié à une meilleure diffusion des technologies Internet dans l'ensemble de notre tissu industriel et commercial concerne à la fois la vitalité de notre secteur productif en technologies de l'information et le développement d'un secteur porteur d'avenir, celui des "Dotcom". En France, les technologies de l'information, en tant que secteur d'activité, jouent aujourd'hui à armes égales avec de nombreux secteurs considérés comme des poids lourds de l'économie, à l'instar des transports ou de l'automobile. Il est donc là aussi indispensable que les spécialistes des technologies de l'information puissent trouver dans notre tissu industriel et commercial le relais de croissance nécessaire à leur développement.

Mais cinq freins principaux ralentissent aujourd'hui la diffusion et l'intégration des technologies de l'information dans le tissu industriel et commercial français :

Un frein culturel, l'informatique étant souvent vécue par les chefs d'entreprises comme une contrainte à leur développement et un centre de coûts ;
Un frein organisationnel, le chef d'entreprise étant souvent le seul décideur en terme d'investissement technologique et n'ayant pas le temps matériel d'identifier les offres les plus adaptées à ses besoins et de mettre en œuvre les solutions requises ;
Un frein économique, les solutions proposées sur le marché étant souvent surdimensionnées et encore beaucoup trop chères au regard des besoins et des ressources financières et matérielles des petites et moyennes entreprises ;
Un frein infra structurel, l'e-business reposant avant tout sur les possibilités offertes aux entreprises de bénéficier d'un accès haut débit à Internet permanent, performant et économique, ce qui n'est pas le cas aujourd'hui ;
Un frein commercial, les industriels des technologies de l'information ne bénéficiant pas de réseau de distribution adapté aux spécificités des petites et moyennes entreprises.

Dans ce contexte, Olivier Midière prédit que la diffusion et l'intégration des nouvelles technologies Internet dans le tissu industriel et commercial français reposeront avant tout sur cinq facteurs clés de succès :

L'élaboration et la mise en œuvre d'une politique gouvernementale volontariste, déterminée et mobilisatrice, associant diffusion des TIC et développement économique territorial ;
Une organisation centralisée/décentralisée privilégiant un maillage en réseau du territoire français ;
Des plans d'action bâtis sur le long terme autour du triptyque Sensibilisation / Formation / Accompagnement ;
Une stratégie de communication fédératrice autour de la politique gouvernementale ;
La mise à disposition des entreprises d'infrastructures haut débit performantes et compétitives sur l'ensemble du territoire.

Olivier Midière ne se contente pas d'énoncer ces principes : il étaye son argumentaire en suggérant des plans précis de communication (comme cette stratégie de communication fédératrice autour de la politique gouvernementale), ou d'équipement à suivre pour permettre à la France d'être compétitive dans le monde des technologies de l'information. Espérons qu'il sera entendu.

Pierre Lombard

Chris Schroeder's Digital Frontiers: Do gamers have something to teach marketers?
By Chris Schroeder
vice president, strategy, The Washington Post Co.
Tuesday, June 29, 2004

Subscribe Now
Send to Friend
Printer Friendly
Reply To Editor
Request Reprint
Add to My List



One of many surprises I had during a fascinating trip to Japan and Korea was how little new and innovative content uses there were considering how prevalent broadband is in both places. In a world of easily accessible download speeds from 20-100 mbps, I expected to be wowed.

In fact, many content developers over there first, and foremost think of the fat pipe as a way to distribute more efficiently that which we already know and love. I was told repeatedly, "Business models for broadband will all make sense when the movie and entertainment companies are comfortable distributing this way and fill up all that pipe."

So while most of the sites offer services and user experiences much like our own meager, sub-1 mbps world, there is one explosive exception: interactive games.

Much is being written about this whole phenomenon. Games in Asia are light years from the knock-'em out, video arcade stuff we focus more on in the U.S. They are, instead, highly sophisticated, collaborative experiences. Communities and relationships develop and the players evolve the rules over days, weeks, months and even years, like open source software developers. Broadband allows them to become extraordinary visual, interactive and relationship-building experiences. Powerful wireless capabilities allow players to check in on the progress of their games during the day. In Korea there is not one, but TWO 24-hour cable stations dedicated to interactive gaming!

Interactive games are, therefore, addictive. They are taking time away from where people of all ages, but especially males in their 20s and 30s, used to spend their time-especially television. They are, now, becoming mainstream in the U.S.

Are there lessons for marketers in the States?

Here's a provocative story from my own home. I recently introduced my 7-year-old son, Jack, to Neopets.com. The site is not yet the elaborate experience I described above (visit Everquest.com for a taste of the best in sophisticated gaming). Neopets is a more static, but still fascinating community. Kids create fantasy, animated "pets," build identities around them, communicate with other "Neofriends" from the off- and online world, and earn "Neodollars" winning arcade- like games that can be spent buying their pets fantasy clothes, food and other activities.

So since I can't figure any of this stuff out-I'm about to turn 40-I sat and watched my son for 45 minutes as my focus group of one. His favorite activity was to fill his "Neobank" with "Neodollars!" Exciting, challenging games called "Trix" and "Lucky Charms" wrap branded entertainment into gameplay. And where did he spend several minutes buying food for his Neopets? "Neo McDonalds."

As a parent, I don't love the idea of my kids engulfed in these games, but I liked Neopets. As I watched Jack creatively inventing his "Neoworlds" and asking me thoughtful math questions about his "Neosavings," this experience was better, and even more educational, than most of the programming for kids on television. In fact, Neopets will be looking to introduce some educational tools in the future. And the branding was astoundingly unobtrusive-present, but merely embedded in the experience.

Once critical mass is reached, are marketing dollars better spent here, or in remote-controllable, PVR-able 30-second spots? Are "ad placements" more effective in a drive-by moment on a TV drama, or as part of an engaged, interactive experience in a game?

The challenges are legion and risky. First, there is a strong anti-advertising bias in the ethos of gaming. Second, the most popular games today are inventive fantasies, intentionally developed to be NOT of this world. Hard to offer a Dark Magician a Coke after a hard battle. Third, players build separate identities for themselves in these games, so the ability to target is limited.

But as games, truly interactive and scenario-building, become more mainstream, might marketing opportunities, implemented sensitively, flourish? Couldn't Sim Cities offer useful opportunities for local advertisers? Keep an eye on the "Lord of the Rings" game about to be released. Are games tailor-made to be ways for people to continue the story lines once a movie has ended? Might game as advertising creative explode? My friend Keith Ferrazzi, who founded Ya-Ya, built "advergaming" products, online ads and microsites where targeted audiences not only saw, but engaged in a company's brand. Perhaps he was ahead of his time, but the idea sounds perfectly suited to our medium, especially in a broadband world. And, by the way, the idea could be perfectly viral.

We are today in interactive gaming about the equivalent of television in 1951. Stay tuned!

Mediapost

Why Resist Consumer Dialogue?
By Tom Hespos
I just finished reading a sample chapter from AdAge editor Scott Donaton's book, Madison & Vine, which is posted on the AdAge.com website here.


Donaton makes some good points in this chapter about product placement and product integration, including citing some examples of what can go wrong when Hollywood and Madison Avenue collide. "Consumers will reject poor attempts to disguise commercials as entertainment," Donaton writes before diving into an example citing Ford and NBC's The Tonight Show. He goes on to show a few more examples in which a ham-handed marketer goes over the line, making integration attempts both obvious and insulting to the consumer.


The common thread in all these examples? Marketers step over the line when they fail to think of consumers as thinking persons with finely tuned BS detectors.


My takeaway from my casual observations of people watching movies and television shows is that consumers can often spot paid product placement a mile away. And when they do spot it, the reaction tends to be one in which the consumer scoffs at the attempt, which can't be good for brand favorability.


I'm interested in reading Donaton's book when it comes out. But I'm more interested in looking at the value proposition of product placement and what causes it to exist in the first place.


Why do marketers want to place their products within entertainment? Some would say it's due to a fear of the commercial-skipping capabilities of DVRs and general consumer tune-out when it comes to TV commercials. Others would say it's an attempt to get some of the "cool factor" of an entertainment brand to rub off on a product.


Personally, I'd say it's an attempt to preserve the broadcast model. After all, what would prompt a marketer to spend money to essentially bribe the producer of a cool TV show or movie to place their product? It might be the fact that many marketers haven't figured out cost-efficient ways to talk to their own consumers, and prefer to broadcast messages in order to talk at them instead of talking with them. Why else would brand marketers take such a huge risk of setting off consumer BS detectors and having their expensive product placement deals backfire in their faces?


On the interactive side, we see this type of behavior everyday. Advertisers continue to dump money into television, even though ratings are declining and prices are escalating. How many marketers do you know that have vast databases where email addresses acquired on their websites are left to rot until they're expired and useless? I know plenty. These are behaviors typical of organizations that don't want to create dialogue with the consumer, but instead want to treat people as mere targets to be struck with the magic bullet of broadcast advertising.


But today's marketer doesn't have to be afraid of conversing with the consumer. While any marketer might be put off by the prospect of millions of consumers trying to converse with their company about a product, we now have CRM solutions, our websites and other technologies to help us manage these conversations. Heck, you can put up a message board, discussion list or other community feature to help facilitate these conversations in just a couple hours. Why shouldn't Weber provide a discussion list that lets consumers talk about summer barbecue ideas and recipes? Why shouldn't Home Depot host the biggest online discussion board for home improvement?


Why shouldn't any marketer tap into the conversations that are occurring online and take an active role in them? Perhaps it's the fear of moving from the broadcast model to something else.


I'm not saying that broadcast advertising doesn't work. That's where my philosophy on commercial communications differs from the principles outlined in The Cluetrain Manifesto. Product and brand awareness has to come from somewhere. But when we engage consumers, we need to do more with that engagement than continue to whack the consumer over the head with the "buy now" message. Otherwise we're doomed to continue to make the broadcast model the dominant one in our marketing communications campaigns, while broadcast audiences diminish in size and the audiences that remain become more and more resistant to the hard sell message.


Mediapost

Being a Profitable Publisher, Step 5
Monday, June 28, 2004
By Aaron DelloIacono Thies, Ad Delivery Solutions
iMedia Connection

Minimize the cost to purchase, setup, maintain and run ad serving technology.
In Step 4, you learned that effective sales packages, a clear media kit and inventory forecasting tools are an essential part of selling ad inventory, because they focus on better revenue generating practices. Achieving publisher advertising profit also depends on reducing ad serving and technology costs.

The basic methods of minimizing the overall cost of ad serving operations are:

Reducing ad delivery technology costs.
Reducing labor spent managing and supporting the technology.
Reducing labor for trafficking ad campaigns.
A publisher needs to perform an economic review of its current ad serving platform to determine what its ad serving cost is on a CPM basis. This is the starting point -- if you don't know what it is costing you to serve ads, you are lost (obviously, if you are a publisher new to ad serving, this step is unnecessary).

A cost analysis means taking an accounting and sum of all of the capital, bandwidth, technology and labor costs incurred to run and manage the ad server each year, then dividing this cost by the number of impressions served per year (in thousands), to get ad serving CPM.

Often, publishers don't think it's worth changing their ad serving technology because the cost to switch and the work involved outweigh the benefits. However, you will never know how those costs compare unless you actually run an analysis. Once you know your baseline ad serving cost, you will be able to compare prices among different ad servers, whether it is an in-house software package (local ad server) or the use of hosted ASP technology (hosted ad server).

Next, your ad operations and ad sales groups should get together to discuss their different needs, the features they require in an ad server, and the current and future ad vehicles or ad packages desired to sell advertising. For example, if your sales team wants to sell "page wrap" style ad campaigns, it would require an ad server that can coordinate two or more related banners on the same page.

Examine how certain technology features could increase the productivity of ad trafficking or increase planning efficiency among the sales staff. Such features as special campaign creation tools, rich media management tools, good campaign search functionality, campaign testing tools, and inventory forecasting will reduce the amount of time spent setting up and selling ad campaigns. Draw up a prioritized list of ad server features so that you can find the best fit when evaluating technology brands.

Only after you know both what represents a good price and what you need in an ad server can you investigate and research the different ad serving technology offerings on the market. When contacting different companies to investigate their products, compare the offered features to those on your organization's needs list, and compare the offered prices to your baseline ad serving cost. For the technologies that seem attractive and match your needs, make sure you request a demo where you can actually set up and run some test campaigns. Get customer references and ask probing questions to businesses that are already using the products to get their feedback. Nothing keeps a technology salesperson honest like tough ad serving tests and reference follow-ups. With a thorough investigation process, the publisher will eventually discover the ad server that fits its needs at the best price.

If you take the time to determine what tools you need to sell better and save labor, what technologies and features are available to satisfy these needs, and a good method of cost comparison, you will be rewarded with overall ad serving cost savings.

Your Other Homepage
Monday, June 28, 2004
By Dave Chase, Contributor
iMedia Connection

Your newsletters are just as valuable -- and important -- as your homepage (first of two parts).
Whether you are a commercial publisher or a marketer, your Web site?s homepage is generally the most valuable and scrutinized piece of real estate in your portfolio.

If you were to wake up tomorrow and have a second homepage with roughly the same value, I doubt you?d turn it down. In fact, you?d probably be willing to pay significantly to obtain that asset. If you learned that it could also increase your site retention by as much as 50 percent that would get your attention. How much would you pay for that? Here?s the good news -- most of you already have it or have a straightforward path to getting that new "homepage." What is it you ask? Your daily/weekly email newsletters and RSS feeds.

While RSS feeds are relatively new, email newsletters aren?t new. So where?s the news in this? While it may not be new, looking at your email newsletters as an asset on par with your homepage should cause you to think differently. The first activity most people take when they go online is checking email. An opt-in mail or RSS message from your site is likely to be the first (and in many cases only) exposure of the day to your brand. It?s worth paying close attention to that impression which in effect is an ad for your site.

After a concerted effort on a small budget, HomeAdvisor.com dramatically increased its newsletter subscribers -- by more than 50 times -- through a combination of site promotion, features requiring registration and promotion. Site traffic grew from 2-3 million unique users per month to more than 5 million while increasing retention by more than 50 percent. And the most important metric moved as well -- a large increase in what valuable actions, like signing up for a partner?s service where they got paid on a per-click basis.

A major concern they had was that since a healthy percentage of newsletter subscribers had come from promotions, HomeAdvisor thought they might not be valuable users. In fact, they performed valuable actions at a significantly higher rate than the rest of the site's user base. As a nice by-product of this effort, HomeAdvisor also increased valuable ad inventory -- ads in newsletters were highly desirable, given the high open and click rates.

At the time, industry sell-through was less than it is today -- so this would be more critical today. Of course, it took more than a snap of the fingers to make this happen, but it didn?t require a large number of resources. Rather, it took a focused effort that stayed well away from issues highlighted in the CAN-SPAM Act.

Unfortunately, most organizations don?t scrutinize their email newsletters in the same way as their homepage, and as a result are leaving money on the table. I find most organizations consider their email newsletters to be a cost of doing business rather than a strategic asset to be leveraged. When I was a general manager of Web businesses such as Sidewalk.com and Encarta.com, we analyzed virtually every pixel of our homepages to squeeze more conversions from that page. We tested positioning of functionality, ad placement, design, choice of text and offers to determine the highest and best use of the real estate.

This isn?t unlike other disciplines that require regular tweaking to improve their results:
A baseball pitcher and his coach analyze the pitcher?s delivery -- how does he hold the ball, at what arm angle does he release the ball, what type of leg kick does he use based on the circumstance, etc.
Retail merchandisers constantly monitor placement of products, promotions, end caps and window displays, all with the intention of increasing revenue and conveying their brand position.
Gardeners test different soil pH, watering methods, seed types, amount of sun exposure, when to plant, etc.
Direct marketers are always in test mode. They have a top-performing offer that they try to knock off with new, and hopefully, better offers, as well as ways of delivering that message.
A chef evolves his dishes to take advantage of the best mix of herbs, cooking methods, in-season ingredients, accompaniments to main dishes, etc.
Imagine if you applied that level of thinking to newsletters and RSS feeds. Most organizations? homepages have matured to a point where they can afford to divert some resources for a time to apply the same skills to newsletters -- and to a lesser degree RSS feeds, since the range of functionality is much more limited by design. Quite frankly, HomeAdvisor.com had very basic reporting and analytic tools, yet dramatic results were achieved.

Today?s email tools have come a long way. Companies such as DoubleClick and Memetic Systems offer rich toolsets that enable the kinds of analytics that we only dreamed about. For a more detailed look at evaluating email service providers, read Is Your Email Old School? and There?s Gold Outside CRM Mailbox.

While it?s critical to focus on the level of engagement with your newsletters -- low open and click rates are never a good sign -- be mindful that unopened mails can still have a positive effect if the rate of unopened mails isn?t too high. Interesting and provocative subject lines can reinforce your brand and what your site has to offer. This is not unlike the view-through most brand marketers now recognize as being at least as important to track as click-through. This effect should be tracked in studies you do on site satisfaction and key brand metrics.

Now that you have seen how the "other homepage" can lead to increased site traffic, retention, valuable actions and increased brand metrics such as brand favorability and message association, we?ll look at what that can do for your business.

Tomorrow: Approaches to take to avoid leaving money on the table.

Dave Chase is a partner with Altus Alliance which specializes in driving revenue traction for emerging businesses. Before joining Altus Alliance, Chase spent nearly 20 years in the industry with the last twelve years at Microsoft in various senior marketing and general management roles, including his role as MSN?s managing director for industry marketing and relations. In that capacity, he was responsible for MSN taking a leadership role within the interactive marketing industry to grow Online?s share of the overall ad market in concert with AOL, CNET, Yahoo!, Google and other market leaders.

Chase played leadership roles in launching several new businesses within Microsoft including Microsoft?s entry into the enterprise software and server business which is now an $8 billion business. This included co-leading Microsoft?s first vertical marketing efforts where he grew the Healthcare vertical market from virtually no presence to a market leading position. The healthcare business now represents over $400 million in revenue for Microsoft.
From there, he was integral in Microsoft?s entry into consumer Internet businesses that achieved both critical and financial success. These included Sidewalk, Encarta, and HomeAdvisor, which were among the first profitable consumer Internet businesses for Microsoft and heavily used email marketing to enable their growth.

MediaPost's MediaDailyNews
Friday, Jun 25, 2004
Advertisers, Networks Discuss Nuptials, Remain Wedded To Good Ideas
by Paul J. Gough

Good sponsorships and entitlements forged between advertisers and networks are like a long-lasting marriage. It takes a lot of work and communication.

That's one of the messages of a panel held Thursday morning at the PROMAX&BDA conference in midtown Manhattan, which detailed the do's and don'ts of what is becoming a more popular way to deal with a fragmented viewing audience that is increasingly immune to the 30-second commercial.

Ralph Heim, marketing media director at the Coors Brewing Co., estimated that like marriages, perhaps 50 percent of all product integration and promotions fail. He blamed the failure of advertising partnerships to a lack of effective communication, whether in the planning stages or in the long runup between conception and execution.

"It works best if two parties talk really frankly," Heim said, extending the marriage analogy.

A lot of work centers around matching the advertiser's brand with the network, said Tim Spengler, executive vice president and director of broadcast TV at Initiative Media.

"You need to understand the essence of the brand and be enough of a 'media junkie' to know the essence of the media companies," Spengler said in an interview with MediaDailyNews. "If you know the landscape--well, I think you have the opportunity."

Initiative has done that recently with clients like AOL, Victoria's Secret, and Home Depot, finding places where the brands' messages resonate well with the audience and the network brands.

"It's an opportunity to get closer to content," Spengler said.

True to the name of the panel, Hallmark Channel Marketing Senior Vice President Laura Masse told MediaDailyNews that the success of a partnership isn't just about signing the contract.

"A lot of the work comes after you've made the deal. A lot of what makes it a success is what you do together once you decide to move forward," Masse said.

Masse agreed that the brands are key to sponsorships and entitlements.

"The overriding sense is to be true to what your brand stands for and what your brand objectives are for, and be creative as you go along," she said.

Heim described Coors' product placement experiences with "Survivor" and "The Restaurant." He said that Mark Burnett Productions was receptive to product placement on "Survivor," and helped make it a good fit with Coors' brand.

"If we feel that 'Survivor' was good, we feel that 'The Restaurant' was a lot better," Heim said, citing Coors' experience with its agency MAGNA Global and reality series' producers, who allowed people on "The Restaurant" set to find ways to weave the brand deeper into the show.

Hallmark Channel has also done several product integrations and entitlements through its Sponsorship Solutions Unit, with Claritin's full sponsorship of "The Long Shot" original movie and a similar deal with Kraft for "The Parent Trap." Bill Abbott, executive vice president of advertising sales at Hallmark Channel, put a guiding rule this way: Entertain or else.

"Ultimately, these things have to work for the consumer, and entertain," Abbott said.

Spengler agreed.

"It has to be organic, entertaining, or fun ... as opposed to purely an in-your-face branding play," he said.




MediaPost Communications
http://www.mediapost.com

World warms to municipal Wi-Fi
By Guy Kewney, Newswireless.net (guy@cix.compulink.co.uk)
Published Friday 25th June 2004 08:49 GMT
The birthplace of municipal Wi-Fi was possibly the London Borough of Westminster, and it appears that the idea of the wireless is catching on in cities worldwide. Indeed, some are looking at wireless Mesh technology with Taipei, Los Angeles, and New York among the more prominent.

According to Computerworld's Bob Brewin, the New York network will be a public safety project, and will be restricted to emergency services folk - but will, nonetheless, cost a terrifying billion dollars. Well, maybe half that, he reports: "Plans [are] to build a public safety wireless network of unprecedented scale and scope, including the capacity to provide tens of thousands of mobile users with the ability to send and receive data while travelings at speeds of up to 70 mph citywide."

Pilot projects are being offered for tender, and most observers - unless they are bidding for these lucrative jobs - are pretty sceptical about making it work. Wi-Fi is not designed for fast mobile use, nor do conventional Wi-Fi networks scale well into vast geographical areas.

Rather more modest, but no less unrealistic was Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou (http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/biz/archives/2004/01/15/2003087712) who was talking ebulliently back in January about making his Taiwanese capital "a wireless Mecca" by the end of this year. Of this enterprise, there was not a shred of evidence when the world's technology observers descended en masse back at the end of May for Computex.

The Taipei Times, endearingly referring to the Mayor as "Ma" throughout, quoted him as telling the European Chamber of Commerce in Taipei: "As of September last year, about 90 per cent of Taipei's 900,000 families have computers. More than 80 percent use the Internet. And more than 87 per cent have mobile phones."

"The next phase is to build a wireless and broadband city. We aim to finish that, or a large part of it, by the end of this year," Ma added. But, as the report noted, not everybody was impressed: "The co-chairwoman of the chamber's telecommunications committee welcomed Ma's pledge, but pointed out that the chamber has other priorities," the paper said politely.

In Los Angeles there's a 17 July deadline for bids for a request for proposal (http://www.muniwireless.com/reports/docs/WiFiZonesPershingSq.pdf) (RFP) to expand the Pershing Square Wi-Fi network to include a city-wide access system, says MuniWireless.

Rather more sensibly, in neighbouring Orange County (part of Greater Los Angeles) Fullerton wants to put together a wireless Mesh. The spec of this project (http://www.ci.fullerton.ca.us/admin_serv/twg/wirelessrfp.html), which is almost certain to miss its July 1 deadline looks incredibly like a definition of the LocustWorld Mesh in its specifications and price, but according to Richard Lander at LocustWorld, his company wasn't aware of the RFP until it was published.

"There are a lot of these municipal wireless projects," said Lander, "some of which look rather more realistic than others. We already have some Mesh systems in California, so we'll be bidding through the firms who installed them there. The Fullerton project looks ideal for us."

So, of course, does the Camberwell project, Boundless Deptford (http://www.consume.net/twiki/bin/view/Main/BoundlessDeptford). Just to encourage people to spread the word, you might like to see what can be done at the rural village of Langtoft

Germany tops porn Web hosting superleague

By Lester Haines
The Register

Germany is the Web host with the most - at least in terms of pornography. The .de TLD boasts 10,030,200 pages of smut, beating the UK's 8,506,800 pages into the runners-up spot.

That's according to Secure Computing, which has just carried out a study of the global distribution of pornographic web pages by the top 100 individual country domains - excluding US domains - using the Secure Computing SmartFilter(R) v4 Control List.

Secure Computing's report into the findings contains some interesting factoids. For instance, by far the biggest concentrations of porn are to be found in Europe and the Pacific. Indeed, humble Niue (.nu) hosts three million pages, elevating it to fourth spot in the league.

The Middle East, by contrast, is almost porn-free. Only Israel (.il) appears on the filth radar with 77,800 pages; and the single Arab nation to host people getting naked is Libya (.ly).

Naturally, the Europeans are going at it like jack rabbits. Every European domain contains some porn pages, with even Liechtenstein (.li) taking time off from producing stamps to knock together 27,800 pages.

And as for Africa, of the 389,400 total pages recorded a whopping 307,000 were found in the Sao Tome (.st) domain.

According to Secure Computing veep Mike Gallagher: "Pages of commercial pornography, like spam, continue to not only grow at an alarming rate, but spread to new countries as they join the Internet. These millions of pages of pornography may create serious liability and productivity problems for employers around the world

"Given the international nature of the Internet, filtering at the gateway level for networks in businesses, schools and homes will remain for the foreseeable future the only effective way to control Internet pornography."

The full top ten is:

Germany: 10,030,200
United Kingdom: 8,506,800
Australia: 5,655,800
Niue: 2,947,800
Japan: 2,700,800
Netherlands: 1,883,800
Russia: 1,080,600
Poland: 1,049,600
Spain: 852,800
Tonga: 848,800
The total Web pages by region is:

Europe: 28,430,600
Pacific: 12,352,600
Asia: 3,193,000
Latin America: 1,048,600
Africa: 389,400
Canada: 283,600
Caribbean:255,000
Middle East: 77,800
Total: 46,030,600

Making Wireless Content Pay
By Susan Kuchinskas - August 2002 Issue, Posted Aug 01, 2002
http://www.ecmag.net/?ArticleID=806
All Content Copyright © 1998-2004 EContentmag.com - All Rights Reserved

There's a lot to dislike about wireless media—not the least of which are crummy green-screen graphics, plain text, and slow download times. But there's a key difference between Web and wireless that gets content providers excited: While Web users expect free content, wireless phone users know the meter is always on. That's why many top media companies are looking to wireless for the revenue boost they never got from the Web.

As U.S. network operators roll out their new, faster next-generation networks, and handset manufacturers respond with Java-based phones with color screens, companies like Playboy.com and Viacom Consumer Products hope that wireless subscribers will log onto wireless Web sites, download games, or subscribe to content pushed to phones—and also open their wallets.


Such optimism is warranted, according to David Chamberlain, research director for Probe Research. He says that the mobile phones of the future will function as entertainment devices as well, and will be conducive to "spur-of-the-moment purchases during periods of boredom." Waiting at the dentist? Pay $.99 to download the Monsters, Inc. game and twiddle the time away. Stalled in a marketing meeting? Perk yourself up with a photo of Anna Kournikova in her underwear and pay for it on your next phone bill.


Five years from now, analysts predict revenue from mobile entertainment could be as much as $1.14 billion. Content companies who've done wireless deals either can't or won't say just how much they were worth, although they insist that money will change hands in these deals. But it's a safe bet that in 2002 wireless revenue will amount to bubkis.


Dial Me In
Nevertheless, the licensing action is hot and heavy. Some wireless content distributors believe that locking up premium content early on will give them the edge they need when negotiating deals with operators. Wireless entertainment companies like Versaly Games, Airborne Entertainment, and Finland's Wireless Entertainment Service (WES) are working hard to schedule lineups of successful properties. That's great news for media companies, some of which even get cold hard cash up front when they sign over wireless rights.

The biggest moneymaker in wireless to date has probably been Bridget Jones's Diary. Creative Artists Agency helped author Helen Fielding sell the rights to create short text messages based on her mega-seller to mobile entertainment company Riot-Entertainment. While neither CAA nor Riot-Entertainment has disclosed how much money was generated by those text messages, which cost subscribers about $.32 each, Fielding bragged to the Times of London that she expected to rake in around US $708,000. (Riot-Entertainment, which also had wireless licenses for Lord of the Rings and Marvel Comics, filed for bankruptcy in March when it couldn't dig up extra venture funding.)

In March, Playboy.com began offering paid downloads of logos to use as phone screensavers through WES. The plan is to add additional frills, such as voicemails from Playmates, animated versions of Hugh Hefner and Playmates, and, when technology improves, actual photos of Playmates. Playboy.com president Larry Lux, who was very pleased to announce that his company will break even this year, expects to profit from at least one million downloads through WES this year. However, he says, "We're not looking at wireless at being a major contributor to this year's financials."

Walt Disney Internet Group makes wireless content available through four of the five top U.S. wireless telephone providers and 12 international carriers, with content including games, ringtones and graphics launched in the U.S. in 2001. Disney aims to build a lucrative standalone wireless business that will provide another vehicle for distributing content, such as news and ESPN sports scores, act as an event-marketing channel for sports events, such as the Final Four basketball games, and offer a revenue boost through the development of games and services based on Disney properties. Executive vice president Larry Shapiro believes, "Companies like us, who have strong brands and marketing channels and can devote resources to creating compelling content, can expect great success in wireless."

Other big Web players are also jumping on the wireless bandwagon. In December, AOL Time Warner licensed Warner Bros. characters including Bugs Bunny for ringtones, screensavers, and wireless games directly to Motorola. Viacom Consumer Products licensed seven different properties including Star Trek, Rug Rats Ratrace, Mission Impossible, and Mighty Mouse. "We decided very early that we wanted to be players in the space," says Pamela Newton, vice president of licensing and marketing. "We've taken a strategic position with the platform, and we feel that there are great opportunities."

Although Newton wouldn't call Viacom's wireless revenue to date significant exactly, it has sweetened the coffers. She says Viacom deals always involve an upfront payment based on a guarantee of revenue over the term of the license, and provision for some kind of backend payment if royalties don't meet the guarantee. Royalties could be calculated based on a percentage of the take, a flat rate, or some more complicated formula. Most of Viacom's wireless deals run for a year or two.

Unfortunately, repurposing content for wireless isn't as easy as it is for the Web. Ask a wireless telco about content delivery, and you plunge into acronym hell. There are no standards for delivering, displaying, or charging for mobile media and a plethora of competing technologies. Top-tier media brands—the Disneys of the world—prefer to work directly with the telcos. But most content companies rely on a middleman to handle not only deal-making, but also the technical challenge of complying with the demands of each network operator's system. It's an ever-shifting sector that can be roughly broken down into three types of players:

• Handset manufacturers: Nokia, Motorola, Sony/Ericsson Alliance, and Qualcomm (maker of chips for handsets) are all busily licensing content and games that they can pre-install on their phones to give them a marketing edge.
• Mobile entertainment companies and content aggregators: Like television production houses, mobile entertainment companies produce original wireless content and may also aggregate offerings from other companies.
• Platforms: Some mobile entertainment providers, usually those specializing in games, also offer a technology platform that integrates content with the telcos' network infrastructure.

Eye on the Prize (Money)
Two factors have fired up the wireless content market. First, a few years ago, wireless telcos thought they held the keys to the kingdom. Since they controlled access to "the next Internet," they assumed they could be wireless versions of Yahoo!, making content companies pay for position on their home decks. Oops! Now, with U.S. subscriptions to the wireless Internet gimping along at 4.5% in 2001, according to research firm Intermarket Group, the operators have decided they need familiar, popular content in order to entice their subscribers. And they've finally woken up to the fact that Hollywood doesn't do free. So, telcos are ready to give a little, offering to share not only revenue from paid downloads, but, in some cases, even a share of the revenue generated when subscribers burn minutes to access WAP games and content.

That cut of the usage revenue had been a deal-breaker because coming up with a figure for how much any particular content boosted subscribers' wireless usage was pure guesstimation.

The second factor goosing the marketplace is the rise of companies willing to insulate the network operator from some of the risk and most of the hassle of providing mobile content. These companies make their own licensing deals for content and offer packages to the operators that usually include the software necessary to keep track of subscriber payments and usage.

These content aggregators are avid to differentiate themselves through deals with marquee entertainment properties. At this stage of the game, premier media companies have them by the bytes, so most entertainment companies engage in the kind of rights-splitting beloved by lawyers, but indistinguishable to consumers. For example, Viacom gave wireless game provider Digital Bridges the right to build wireless games based on Star Trek and wireless entertainment company Versaly the rights to wireless Star Trek "content," things like graphics, ringtones, pictures, and text messages.

The media companies want to license as much as they can now, then sit back and see how the whole wireless thing plays out. When he's asked if he worries about overextending his brand, Disney's Larry Shapiro says, "It's a little early to worry about that. Call me back in two years, and I'll be very happy if I have that problem."