ChaosScenario

Chaos Links 01-30-06

There are so many great links and just not enough time to blog about them all. So we'll introduce a new feature on ChaosScenario, Chaos links to news in the blogosphere:

Jaffe Juice and Micro Persuasion comment on ESPN's attempt to sell their commercials through iTunes.

Adjab and Adrants blog about Super Bowl ads being on-line after the Super Bowls. Look for reviews from ChaosScenario on the best, worst, most effective use new media, and whether we watched the game or just Tivo'd the commercials.

Marketing Vox predicts a strong M&A market for Internet Marketing companies.

Got a tip? Post a comment or send us an email.

- Paul Herring

Pontiac's use of Google dangerous

There were a number of email flying this week at our agency when Pontiac released their ad telling viewers  ""Don't take our word for it, Google "Pontiac" to find out!". Take a look at it here. Most people inside the agency and it appear outside as well thought that the idea was interesting, because of the brand association with Google. If your going to ask people to take this kind of action, however, you'd better know what they are going to get when they "Google Pontiac", in other words, you'd better be number one on the page they get, especially for this kind of money. Getting to that all important number one position is difficult. With Ad Words you can always be outbid. With natural search you may get listed first but you never know what else will be on the page.

So I tried it this morning. I noticed that Mazda (or someone loosely affiliated with Mazda) is beginning to pay for the number one position. If the commercial continues to run, look for even more competitors to show up.

John provides even more detail about this on his Random Culture blog.

- Paul Herring

Beware the video induced laziness

One of our many tech partners specializing in online video ads came to our agency the other day to demo his technology. The vast majority of his demo was made-for-TV video now running in an online ad. Facing a room full of creative people he said something like "By using video like this the creative team doesn’t have to do as much work." I understand he had the best intentions, but what I heard was, "When TV ads start getting slapped into the online rectangles you guys are going to get slapped out of a job."

This slap-it-in-there approach goes beyond this particular presentation. Based on more than a good handful of in-ad video executions, I’ve seen over the last year (enough for me to consider it a trend), online video is making advertisers lazy. A decision is made to pop a 15 second spot into an ad so everyone takes the day off? I don’t get it. It’s as if video shows up and nobody’s focusing on design, messaging, or adding value.

The online medium should be about innovation while video, in and of itself, is most certainly not innovative. So in the interest of squashing laziness, promoting innovation, (and keeping those offline video producers from thinking all we need is their 15-30 second spot to make the magic happen), I’ve got a short list of simple ways to put creative online thinking before video:

The iTunes Halo Effect

This is huge...According to TVWeek, television networks are beginning to see audience growth as a result of making their programming available through iTunes. The Office had its biggest rating yet. And NBC is attributing that new audience to iTunes. "The iTunes offering is bringing new audiences to the show that would not otherwise have watched, said Frederick Huntsberry, president of NBCU Television Distribution. Consumers have choices, and we are not reaching all consumers with one technology." And it seems that NBC isn't the only one seeing the potential in making their content available on new platforms. ABC is seeing growth in their audience for Lost and Desperate Housewives. Additionally, Adweek reports that MTV Networks is releasing programming from MTV, MTV2, Comedy Central Nickelodeon and the N today on iTunes. Talk about a revolution! Hang on, it's going to be a wild ride.

- Pete Lerma

Yahoo! is number two and that's OK

Yahoo! announced that they were quite comfortable with being second (to Google), causing a stir among bloggers. Who wants to be number 2? In an attempt to explain what they really meant, they released a statement on their blog describing their strategy. Is it OK to be the best but number two in "market share"?

Yahoo has been focusing on releasing some cool tools and in terms of their aggregating and delivering content outside of just links, I believe they are way ahead of the competition. The problem here is PR and as pointed out by Micro Persuasion, Yahoo! doesn't do a great job in addressing the blogosphere storm on this issue.

- Paul Herring

Nielsen DVR Metrics Flawed?

Paul made a post earlier this month that Nielsen is beginning to monitor DVR use for the first time this year. Undoubtedly, this reporting from Nielsen is going to influence spending in the more than $70 billion TV advertising industry. But according to David Card, VP and Senior Analyst at JupiterResearch, that may not be such a good idea.

David posts on his blog that a TV Week article (registration required) says Nielsen currently is basing reporting off of only 60 DVRs! We hope this is a typo... If not, no one should be paying attention to these numbers. As David points out, JupiterResearch had 550 DVRs in a study they conducted on the subject. If the TV Week article is right, it will take Nielsen half the year just to catch up.

- John Keehler

Click to call shows promise

When customers on a website or those who are just not comfortable with some transactions on-line need to talk to someone, click to call features let customers talk to a real live person. Talking to someone live can close the deal. Media Buyer Planner recently released an article on how Chrysler used the technology.

"80 percent of the calls generated through the new technology were put through to a dealer. Fifteen percent of those closed a sale."

Those of you who have worked in the automotive industry know that getting a call to a dealership is a big deal. A close rate of around twelve percent (80 percent times 15 percent) is a huge deal. Don't be fooled, however. Just allowing a customer to talk to a real live person isn't enough. It has to be a person who can address their question. I've seen to many of these click-to-call buttons that are little more than an on-line chat with someone who knows less than you do about your question.

- Paul Herring

Vote for Random Culture!

John Keehler's Random Culture blog has been nominated for the Battle of the Blogs contest. You'll have to scroll down to find it but its under best inspiration blogs. I love this blog and quite honestly it was an inspiration for this blog! I know from our stats log that we get quite a bit of traffic from his blog as well.

Hopefully as time goes on ChaosScenario will get the opportunity to get into this type of competition! Help us make this blog better by commenting or sending us an email.

- Paul Herring

Consumer generated content -- a new wave

The creation of consumer generated content, as well as its popularity is taking off. LeeAnn Prescott of Hitwise recently reported on the how the popularity of social networking, wikipedia, tagging sites such as Flikr and Deli.cio.us, video sites such as YouTube and blogs in general allow users to find, tag and post content like they never have before. Marketers beware, however! Insulting the intelligence of these communities could backfire.  Coke's Zero product learned the hard way. Adrants and many other blogs have attacked their attempt to fool consumers into thinking that the blog was legit. Coke eventually came clean and posted its logo on the site, but what a waste of time!

When it comes down to it, honesty is the best policy.  A recent study from a board member of WOMMA even suggests that consumers may be willing to engage in legitimate conversations with brands. I'm honoring the authors request to link to a page where you can download the report after registering.

- Paul Herring

Predictions for 2006: Pete Lerma

I love predictions. December and January every year you see tons of them. In this case, I agree with John that these are generally predictable predictions. The great thing is they all point to it being a great time to be in the interactive marketing industry. The one prediction I will comment on is the  percent of advertising which will go to online. eMarketer predicts that it will surpass 5% of all advertising spending in 2006. And they've compiled that number by analyzing data from the IAB, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Universal McCann. There are still plenty of advertisers who don't spend any money online. So I want to know, of the people who include online, what percentage of your budget is dedicated to online?

-Pete Lerma