Eight Ways to Improve the ROI of Online Games

Thanks Nat Factor for sharing this post on game ROI

Jun 30, 2009 6:02 AM, Patricia Odell for PROMO Xtra

The Subway Scrabble game, which incorporates hundreds of millions of game pieces on Subway cups and sub wraps, has just begun its annual run. Each year the response has improved significantly. So, how do they do it? Take a look at these eight best practices from Catapult Action-Biased Marketing.

1. Attainability Boost the odds of winning by offering more lower-level prizing. Last year, an online instant-win chance was added to every game piece, which doubled the number of game codes entered online and sent more people back to the stores to buy product.

2. Communicate Emphasize the number of prizes and odds of winning at all touch points: P-O-P, mass media, FSIs, tip-ins, paid search, search engines, banners etc.

3. Give away a free code This gets consumers to register for the first time, try the promotion and then drives them back to the store to collect more game pieces. It’s also a significant opportunity to boost op-in and build the in-house database.

4. Split registration Optimize the registration process by collecting only the necessary data up front—name, e-mail address, age—then on the back end collect redemption information—address, phone number. The benefit? A consumer who has privacy concerns is more likely to complete the registration, minimizing drop-off rates. “The last thing you want is for someone to come to your microsite and then drop off because its not a good experience,” says Jason Katz, executive vice president of emerging media for Catapult Action-Biased Marketing.

5. Offer multiple ways to enter Expand entry points for an online promo with a text-to-win option. Some 10% to 50% of sweeps entries now come in through SMS, according to John Ross, account supervisor at Catapult.

6. Virtual prize partners Build excitement by seeking a partner to use for prizes that can be instantly won online, like music downloads or ring tones. This allows for an immediate reward to the players and increase response and viral sharing.

7. Build relevant landing pages These pages should be grounded in insights about your target audience; how, when and where would they like to be intersected and what’s the most compelling message. For example, a female, 35 plus should see a very different landing page than an 18-year-old male.

8. Paid Search This also allows marketers to optimize response by moving marketing dollars around based on response to key search words.

How marketers can leverage the semantic web

Via imediaconnection.

If you think semantic is the same as contextual, think again. Here's what you need to know about harnessing the power of words online.

Online advertising is all about relevance -- being in the right place, at the right time, when consumers are most receptive to your message. But as any marketer who's been around the block can attest, that's easier said than done. Keywords are one thing; piecing them together to infer meaning and context is quite another. In this interview, Lori Xeller, senior director of sales for Kontera, discusses the opportunities offered by in-text advertising, as well as the misconceptions and market climate surrounding the technology.

iMedia: At the summit, you'll be discussing the importance of leveraging the semantic web. Can you give me one or two simple examples of how you help clients do this?

Lori Xeller: Our semantic technology enables us to make the most relevant associations between and among the user, the content he or she is consuming, and our advertisers. The key phrases that we highlight in an article can be thought of as predicting what the user would type into a search engine to get to that page. By associating this phrase with a relevant ad, we deliver a very high level of engagement and an extremely qualified user to the advertiser.

There are a few different companies talking about the semantic web today, with networks, for example, amplifying certain takes on relevance and directing search queries to their clients' products. But delivering the most relevant results that anticipate what a given user's query will be within the in-text segment narrows the purchase funnel in ways that no other segment can.

iMedia: What's the biggest danger in neglecting the semantic web and focusing exclusively on keywords when it comes to searches and ad placement?

Xeller: The danger is that you are missing a valuable opportunity to engage with your audience at the moment when they are most engaged -- within the content. In-text provides an additional opportunity to capture your audience further down the consideration cycle, after they've performed a search query, possibly, and landed on the page of interest. Upon user mouse-over, the ad is delivered in the content that they're reading, or where they're doing research -- wherever the user is engaged. Sometimes that can occur in a nonintuitive or hard-to-reach place, and with in-text, you're not competing with banners that are on the side of the page.

Leveraging the semantic web is smart because it anticipates what the user is thinking and will consider. Our campaign data show how powerful this can be.

iMedia: What's the most common misconception you hear from marketers when it comes to leveraging the semantic web? What do these people need to know?

Xeller: The most common misconception is that semantic is the same as contextual. Semantic does not just target keywords -- semantic infers meaning and context. Semantic technologies can then anticipate what the user is thinking and deliver appropriate ads accordingly.

iMedia: On a more general note, how has the recent downturn affected the marketing needs of your clients? What are the most common questions or issues that clients are coming to you with right now?

Xeller: All marketers are more and more accountable for every dollar they spend. They want to know how they can continue to drive toward their engagement, consideration, and revenue goals with either reduced budgets or higher expectations. We provide them with a great solution because our units are user initiated, which requires the user to engage. At the point they see it; the high level of relevancy of the ad to the page encourages their consideration or brand involvement. The result benefits the advertiser, providing them with an extremely cost effective and engaging solution

Our business is doing well, so perhaps the marketing downturn has driven dollars to more accountable segments. Clients are asking about the brand effects of in-text when they're buying clicks. We know they exist because once a user mouses-over and the unit launches, it's impossible to not have a brand experience with in-text. An advertiser receives the brand engagement for no additional charge -- and we're talking about some of the best engagement rates in all of interactive.

iMedia: Beyond the semantic web, where do you see the greatest untapped opportunity for digital marketers? And what is your high-level advice for breaking into this opportunity?

Xeller: One thing that in-text does is enable publishers to leverage the newest technologies, while being unobtrusive to users and performing extremely well for performance and brand marketers. It's one of the few new marketing technologies that maintains the triangle of benefit for buyers, sellers, and users, and we expect it to continue growing indefinitely.

There are a lot of new great opportunities out there for digital marketers today. These would range from in-text to mobile, content integration, and so on. My advice to the marketers would be this: Don't be afraid to test them and see the results for yourself, but make sure to have a clear understanding of the vendor's history and experience before signing on.

Lori Luechtefeld is editor of iMedia Connection.

Youth no longer defined by age

Youth No Longer Defined by Chronological Age; Consumers Stay ‘Younger’ Longer

Thanks to Marketing Charts for this post. You can checkout the original article here.

The traditional demographic definition of “youth” is no longer applicable in today’s society, and marketers should target consumers based upon their engagement and participation in youth culture rather than on their chronological age, according to the “Golden Age of Youth” study from Viacom Brand Solutions International (VBSI).

As people worldwide delay the onset of adult responsibilities and stay emotionally and physically younger for longer, it is becoming more acceptable for older people to participate in youthful pursuits. To support this trend, marketers should routinely consider the often-overlooked 25-34 age group a part of the youth market, VBSI said.
“Contemporary youth should now be defined as ‘the absence of functional and/or emotional maturity,’ reflecting the fact that accepting traditional responsibilities such as mortgages, children and developing a strong sense of self-identity/perspective is occurring later and later in life,” the study said.

Indeed, 52% of all 25-34 year-olds agree they still have “a lot of growing up to do,” and this sentiment is highest in Asian (78%) and Latin American (66%) markets.

“Even in these financially challenging times, people are trying to stay younger for longer,” said Kevin Razvi, EVP and managing director of VBSI. “25-to-34 year-olds are continuing to consume music, gaming and the internet and are enjoying the pursuits of their younger years while benefiting from a greater level of personal and financial freedom. We therefore need to rethink what ‘youth’ actually means and how we and our partners can approach this constantly evolving group of people.”

Three Stages of Youth

Though those between 25 and 34 remain youthful, there are some important differences among them and their younger and older counterparts. The study identified three distinct stages of youth: “Discovery” (16-19 years old), “Experimentation” (20-24 years old) and “Golden” (25-34 years old), and found that the youth market has grown to include all three as the differentiation between traditional demographic groups has become blurred through lifestyle choice and spending power.

Key findings:
25-34 year-olds do not respond to the same marketing as teens and those who assume they do are seeing a “youth mirage.” Though they may look similar and access many of the same brands, only 9% of those 25-34 globally said that they would actually like to be a teenager in 2008. Agreement with this statement was lowest in developed markets: Japan (4%), Europe (5%) and the US (9%).

“Golden” Youth are happier, and more confident/secure and gravitate toward premium, understated and often luxurious brands and experiences to affirm their identity. In contrast, teenagers are highly focused on material gain and employ brands to define their identity.

25-34-year-olds are most likely to agree that they are happy or content with their personal life, and are 24% more likely than teens to agree that they “love life.”

More than 80% of the global respondents say that that the 20s should be about exploring life and having fun.

Teens feel under pressure to figure out who they are and where they are going and are 23% more likely than those 25-34 to agree that their life is more stressful. This is particularly true in Europe and in the US.

17% of the global sample who said they’d “made some major decisions in life too early” were the most unhappy and stressed group of 25-34 year olds among all the respondents.

“Traditional adult brands need to adopt a more youthful tone to avoid being seen as irrelevant,” the study said. To support this, 23% of the 25-to-34-year-old global sample feels that financial institutions are aimed at those older than they are; while youthful brands have a new market beyond the core teenage target. In the traditionally young area of technology, one-third of 25-34 year olds agree they’re really interested in new technology, and 66% say that they take the time to learn how things work to get the most out of them.Other regional differences:

Respondents age 25-34 who are married are significantly more likely to be happy (66%) vs. singles (30%).

Only 36% of Europeans and 39% of Asians 25-34 feel like they’re struggling with their current financial situation vs. 55% in Latin America and 51% in America.

71% of 25-34-year-olds agree they feel comfortable with who they are. Those who feel most settled with their identity live in Mexico (84%), India (83%) and Saudi Arabia (82%). Those who are least comfortable are the Japanese (26%).

35% of Europeans would find it strange if someone got married in their early 20s vs. only 20% of Americans and 18% of Japanese.

In general, 78% are optimistic about their future. This is highest in Latin America (85%), lowest in Asia (67%) and the US (72%).

62% of Latin Americans felt they made life decisions too early vs. only 24% Japanese, 37% of Europeans and 50% of Americans.

The study also found that from a global perspective, 25 is the “ideal” age overall. Additional findings and regional differences:

27 is the ideal age to buy a house (25 in the UK, 33 in Japan).
22 is the ideal age to buy a car (20 in the US and UK, and 29 in China).
26 is the ideal age for love (25 in Saudi Arabia and 28 in Mexico).
23 is the ideal age to get a credit card (20 in the US)
19 is the ideal age to travel without parents (25 in Saudi Arabia).
27 is the ideal age to be a parent.
20 is the ideal age to lose your virginity (no differences by region).
22 is the ideal age to move out on your own.
26 is the ideal age to start saving for retirement (23 in US and 25 in Europe and Latin America)

About the survey: VBSI used both qualitative and quantitative methodologies to survey more than 25,000 respondents between age 16-46 in 18 countries. These included Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Italy, India, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, UK and the US. The survey was carried out between January and August 2008.

Teen tips on how so totally NOT to do digital

Thanks to NGT for providing us with this insightful article on vital digital perspectives from those that probably know it best


Brands all over the world are trying to reach young people through digital channels. So how are they doing? Are the kids digging their Facebook apps? What about that jam playing on their website? Are they besties with marketers on Bebo? Hmmm, not so much.
PSFK pointed us to Ruby Pseudo’s “Teen Commandments for brands wanting to ‘do digital’” which includes some way harsh, but important, feedback from young Brits. For one, they’re bored of Facebook shenanigans (see image).

Fern, a 23-year-old from London, said “I generally hate - with a passion - all Facebook applications. I currently have 500 unchecked applications. They are of no interest to me whatsoever. I don’t care what celebrity I look like; I don’t care whether I’m hot or not and I don’t have time to draw silly pictures on walls”

Perhaps Solomon, (21) sums it up then with “Offer prizes for shooting a duck? What am I? A freakin’ idiot?”

(Though it’s worth mentioning that these quotes are from 20-somethings, not teens…)

Secondly, they are tired of inauthenticity, pandering, pop-ups and other nonsense (they want utility, just like the rest of us!) Here Ruby enumerates rules of engagement for brands in the youth space:

1. Too often, I think brands believe frippery is fantastic, it’s not - get to the point. Kids - like adults - probably want to know something along the lines of the following from your site… a) where your nearest store, event or retailer is, b) what your product/event/etc is going to cost them, c) how to get in touch with you or d) something pretty much damn nothing like playing a game whereby you click a cursor so some girls knickers fall off.

2. Present the freaking facts. Have a place where kids can put their own opinions down, and be approachable.

3. Don’t redirect them, that’s just rude - they’ve just turned up at your digital door. Sort your URL out.

4. Don’t put some tune you think is ‘hip’ on in the background; it won’t be.

5. And don’t turn up on their Facebook page and think you know what’s going on - you don’t.

6. Also, whilst we’re at it, if they’re recently broken hearted, they won’t want to speak to you about it. Secondly, they don’t want you shoving some ‘Single? Broken-Hearted?” quip questions at them either. Have some manners.

7. Bebo… is not looked at by anyone over the age of 12. I’d say 8, but they’ll have some statistic to wak back at me that would disprove my point.

8. Do not, whatever you do, appropriate youth culture on your site, but hell, we hope you know this.

9. Avoid pop-ups. Kids hate them.

10. Finally, with Facebook and MySpace etc, please remember that you’re in their (digital) space: they didn’t ask you to be there, and they can’t very well ask you to leave, so talk nicely. And if you haven’t got anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all…

TV's Future Looks Like Web's Present

Thanks Adweek: Forrester says targeted ads and a portal-like menu of options are coming to your set

Aug 27, 2008 -By Brian Morrissey

Forrester: The shift will help TV remain the dominant advertising medium.

NEW YORK TV advertising is poised to change dramatically over the next decade, embracing the kind of targeting and user control already common on the Web, according to a new report by Forrester Research.

Forrester lays out a decade-long evolution that will ultimately result in most programming delivered on-demand with targeted ad messages based on location and behavior, along with community functions.

This "Personal TV," as Forrester calls it, would also deliver a Web-like experience for consumers, with a portal-like menu of programming options and search functions.

Forrester sees this shift giving TV an opportunity to remain the dominant ad medium it is today. While a personalized offering would seem geared toward further audience fragmentation, Forrester anticipates systems that would allow advertisers to reach mass audiences in a targeted manner. What's more, cable companies, with subscribers' billing histories, know more about users than Web companies. Ultimately, TV will work like the Web, enabling viewers to interact with ads up to the point of purchase.

"The players here are the people who own the popular programs and then the distributors who have digital systems capable of serving programs into set top boxes," said David Graves, the report's author.

That hasn't stopped Web giants such as Google and Microsoft from trying to break into the medium and extend their reach across TV advertising. Google is placing ads through Echostar's Dish Network and Microsoft has plans to build an ad network after buying Navic Networks.

In the near term, Forrester expects experimentation in video on-demand offerings by cable companies, like CBS's CSI on Comcast that includes ads that cannot be skipped.

Forrester predicts that in 2010, targeting and on-demand programming systems will be up and running, before the big industry-wide shift takes place from 2012-18.

What's taken so long? Forrester spreads the blame across the TV landscape. Cable companies didn't build-out video on-demand as an ad-supported platform, networks protected the lucrative status quo and agencies didn't push for innovation.

Emotional tagging of memories

Emotion And The Formation Of Brand Memories

by Gord Hotchkiss from MediaPosts Search Insider


In my last column, I looked at how beliefs can affix labels to brands, which forever after form our first brand impression. Beliefs are a heuristic shortcut we use to reduce the amount of sheer thinking we have to do to come to quick and efficient decisions. Today, I'd like to focus on emotions and their part in the forming of memories.

Why "Selfish Genes" Remember

First, from an evolutionary perspective, it might be helpful to cover off why humans are able to form memories in the first place. To borrow Richard Dawkins' wording, memories are here to ensure that our " selfish genes" are passed on to future generations. While memories are incredibly complex and wonderful things, their reason for being is mindlessly simple. Memories are here to ensure that we survive long enough to procreate. This is why emotion plays such a huge role in how memories are formed and retrieved.

Researchers have long known that emotions "tag" memories, making their retrieval easier and the resulting effect more powerful. In fact, very strong emotions, such as fear or anger, get stored not just in our cortical areas but also get an "emergency" version stored in the limbic system to allow us to respond quickly and viscerally to threatening situations. When this goes wrong, it can lead to phobic behavior. Emotions add power and urgency to memories, moving them up the priority queue and causing us to act on them both subconsciously and consciously. The very meaning of the word emotion comes from the latin "emovere" -- to move.

Driven by Emotions

Emotional tagging works equally well for positive memories. Our positive emotions are generally affixed to three of the four human drives identified by Nohria and Lawrence: the drive to bond, the drive to acquire and the drive to learn. For the selfish gene, each of these drives has its evolutionary purpose. We have the strongest positive emotions around the things that further these drives the most. We reserve our strongest "bonding" emotions for those that play the biggest part in ensuring our genetic survival: partners, parents, children and siblings. In some cases we share a significant portion of our genetic material; at other times, the complex sexual wiring we come with kicks into gear.

If we look at the drives to acquire or to learn, millions of pages have been written trying to decode human behavior in pursuit of these goals. For the purpose of this column, it will have to suffice to say that markets have long known about the power of these drives in shaping human behavior and have tried every way possible to tap into their ability to move us to action, usually through consumption of a product.

In summary, we reserve our strongest emotions for those things that are most aligned with the mindless purpose of the selfish gene, passing along our DNA. These emotions tag relevant memories, giving them the power to move us to immediate action. Perceived threats trigger negative memories and avoidance or confrontation, while positive memories drive us to pursue pleasurable ends.

Brand + Emotion = Power

This emotional tagging of memories can have a huge impact on our brand relationships, in both positive and negative ways. While I've painted a very simplistic picture of the primary objective of emotions and memories (and the heart of it is simple), the culture we have created is anything but. Memories and emotions play out in complex and surprising ways, especially when we interact with brands.

Brand advertisers have become quite adept at pushing our evolutionary hot buttons, trying to tag the right emotions to their respective memories. Their goal is to affix a particularly strong emotion (either negative, referred to in marketing parlance as prevention, or positive, which we've labeled promotion) to their particular brand construct so that when the memories that make up that construct are retrieved (along with the attached beliefs and brand label) they are powered with the turbo-charge that comes with emotion. If the marketer is successful in doing this, they have unleashed a powerful force.

When emotions play a role, our motivation comes not just from rational decisions, but a much more primal and powerful force that sits at the core of our subconscious brain. The most successful brands have managed to forge these emotional connections. And when the emotions remain consistent for a particular brand, there are coalesced into a strong brand belief that is almost unshakable once formed. This is why your father buys nothing but Fords, Mac fans wouldn't be caught dead with a plain grey laptop ,or coffee connoisseurs swear that Starbucks is worth the price.

McDonald's is Launching Their Own Virtual World

This Is Smart Business.
by: Scott Goodson thanks to FutureLab

What can we learn from McDonald's creating their own virtual world? That they are moving into their own customized world says one thing to me, that it will become more valuable for brands to create and curate their own virtual worlds rather than joining existing public virtual worlds.

The reason being that the brand not only benefits from being in an innovative virtual world, but it owns the media and, over time this media, will become more and more valuable. Very smart marketing on the part of the firm and equally smart business.
From Virtual Worlds: McDonald's is apparently in the process of soft-launching a virtual world to take over HappyMeal.com. It's not clear how old the world is, but the contest is still open for kids to pick the virtual world's name--and, according to the intro video, new games, lands, events, etc., to build the world from the ground up based on videos.. So I'm guessing the transition is pretty new, possibly even just from last week. There is already an eye toward real-world integration: entering a code from actual Happy Meal boxes and bags as well as McDonald's milk cartons and Apple Dipper bags will let users unlock exclusive items in the Flash-based virtual world. Treehouse There are also already a fair number of environments available for play in addition to a customizable treehouse where you can store some of your virtual goods. Other items will customize users' avatars, add interactive pets, or feature interactive characters from movies, comic books, and TV shows. Aside from the cost of a Happy Meal, the website says everything is free for its users. Users can also earn points towards purchases simply by completing activities in the virtual world, but it seems like there will still be exclusive items available only for McDonald's customers. There also appears to be a metagame, where characters earn points and have "smarts," "strength," and "spark," stats. Points are earned through all the in-world activities, and the goal is to "keep your avatar happy" by keeping all three stats at their maximum level while playing. I'm not sure what that does, though. In addition to the casual games, there are also larger quests for users to complete as interactive stories throughout the world. Piratebay The registration process doesn't take much information from users, keeping it fairly private. Users can also simply login quickly as guests without providing any information. Of course, then they can't build their characters and houses over time. On the safety side, users can chat and add to a buddy list, but it looks like chat is done entirely through pre-set phrases. However, while there's a "Parent's Retreat" on the main site, I can't find any information specifically about the virtual world to confirm its safety precautions.

Original Post: http://scottgoodson.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/08/mcdonalds-is-launching-their-own-virtual-world-this-is-smart-business.html

BMW hourglass

What’s an hourglass? Oh yes, it’s an ancient time piece, flowing fine sand quietly marking time in a perfectly balanced glass. Or, as everyone should know by now, it is the main prop at Never Stand Still. 

It was the kick-off party to start the countdown for BMW’s European launch of the latest model of BMW 7 series, slated to take place this fall. The car, displayed in the world’s largest hourglass in the Red Square, has not received much coverage but as soon as the construction of the hourglass marvel began four months ago, online buzz about it has been consistent. The 12-meter-high glass contraption was the centerpiece of the party thrown to 400 invited guests and celebrities. At the start of the build-up, more than 180,000 silvery balls concealed the car that was gradually revealed as the balls fell to the lower level. 

Moscow is a strong and growing market for BMW, and what better place to strut its latest but the historic location against the backdrop of the Kremlin, St. Basil’s Cathedral and G.U.M. – all veterans of many a communist-era motorized military parade. By Tuija Seipell from TheCoolHunter: http://www.thecoolhunter.com.au/events

Never Stand Still.

What is the distinguishing factor of successful people? They always perceive achievements as the starting point for new levels of performance.

BMW took this approach as the central theme for a vehicle presentation of the most unusual kind.

BMW has created the world's largest hourglass at the Red Square in Moscow to showcase its new flagship: the BMW 7 Series. 

Everybody loves "Family Guy" - but do they love watching ads online?

Google in LA is experimenting with a new method of distributing original material on the web, which involves a plan to syndicate a new program by the creator of "Family Guy", Seth MacFarlane, called "Seth MacFarlane's Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy", using its AdSense advertising system to thousands of websites that are predetirmined to be gathering spots for Mr MacFarlane's target audience. 

Instead of placing a static ad on a Web page, Google will place a "Cavalcade" video clip. Advertising will then be incorporated into the clips in various ways.

I don't know about you, but the clips would have to be pretty freakin' hilarious for me to sit through the ads just to watch a two min clip online.

Thanks to the NY Times for this post. To read more, visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/30/business/30google.html?_r=1&th=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&emc=th&adxnnlx=1214874203-XpPyo0ZQXLn5mY3x5XVnjw

The digital influencer

Thanks Elizabeth Ball for forwarding this study from Fleishmann- Hillard: "Understanding the role of the Internet in the lives of consumers in the UK, Germany and France"

http://www.fhdigital.net/InfluenceIndex/The-Digital-Influence-Index-2008.pdf

Some good insights ans figures around the role of digital in decision making

Seminar at Cannes Lions 2008 "The Social Metropolis"

Newsletter from GoViral:

The Social Metropolis
The main theme of The Social Metropolis is Digital Brand Activation. In the following you will be introduced to how you do Digital Brand Activation and why you should be using a Digital Brand Activation approach.

What does Social Metropolis mean?
Media is democratizing – participation is taking over from more passive media forms. This leads to a greatly diversified and fragmented media place – one where it is harder to engage people.
Ultimately, the attention economy of the Social Metropolis is a zero-sum game. The attention somebody gets, someone else is denied.

One of the key challenges is to stay on top of the developments in the Social Metropolis. Just like a real city, the infrastructure develops all the time. Technology is the driver of all this, but it is also what will help us re-activate our brands in the social media world. Technology can help us reach the right people and measure our activities properly. Just think how well we have defined the traditional formats of mass marketing, and how much time we are spending, planning the right channels to get the desired outcome. The same consistent structure, quality, and insights are needed to achieve and maintain a high quality on your social media campaign plan, only the target can now be 1000 destinations instead of 10. The answer to this challenge is: The right mix of good content, the right technology and good media planning.

Social Citizen Activation
The framework for Social Citizen Activation regards Content, Activation and Attention; a) Content; we need to get content right in order for people to like it. b) Activation; we need professional and technologically aided distribution, if we are to succeed in reaching the right people c) Attention; mapping what we plan to do and measuring properly, what we achieved, allows us to receive feedback, benchmark our social media campaigns and gradually improve our activities. This is basically the three stages we take you through at GoViral – content evaluation, seeding and tracking with some spice and some insights to why these three phases are the right ones.

Digital Brand Activation
Bringing something to the table for users, in order to receive their support, requires a very different mind-set and set of tools than traditional advertising. There is a major difference between getting people to promote a social cause, and the interests of your company. Quite frankly, social epidemics are quite rare, especially for companies to instigate on purpose. The solution can be found in "big seed marketing" and "always on".

Big Seed: The central thesis of our book is that between the traditional mass marketing approach, and the newer influences such as viral marketing, is an important gap that marketers can capitalize on. Inspired by Duncan J. Watts, we propose an approach called 'Big Seed Marketing' that combines viral marketing tools with old fashioned mass media techniques in a new and creative way. Big seed means optimizing your content strategy and your distribution strategy to craft effective campaigns.

Always on: A central concept in marketing is the campaigns. All of marketing are set up today to plan and execute campaigns. 'Always on' addresses what happens when people are talking all the time, and you are only talking three months pr. year. For that, we have described the entire circle of marketing as a) search, b) review, c) buy and d) affect others. This circle covers the user's journey from potential customer to active brand advocate. 'Always on' invites the reader into a world, where people are discussing, reviewing and rating your product and brand all the time. A metropolis that never sleeps…
'Always on' means optimizing your online strategy to make sure you are present at all the main touch points of the consumer journey, that you have enough content available, and that you help the users get the best experience. This includes community building, easy access to help, services and guides, experiences and much more.

Nike Hyperdunk
The Nike Hyperdunk is the company's lightest and strongest basketball shoe ever. Weighing in at only 13 ounces, the Hyperdunk is 18% lighter than the average Nike Basket ball shoe, giving you better performance on the court and, apparently, allowing you to jump over speeding Aston Martins.
Nike produced two co-branded videos, featuring basket ball superstar Kobe Bryant jumping over a speeding Aston Martin and a pool of snakes, together with the Jackass crew.

Content. Activation. Attention.
The content of the video is great, because it just on the verge of unbelievable, but not crossing the line. Did he actually do it? Since the content is of such high quality, the activation phase is easier. People pass it on, if it is good enough. Companies still need to work professionally with placing the content in all the right channels, though. Attention is difficult to speculate about on this one, but having constructed the campaign with multiple clips, Nike managed to generate more than 7,5 mio. views over the first running weeks of the campaign, just on Youtube. More than 1,5 mio. additional views came from spoof videos or responses to the campaign. In addition, several of the spoof videos link to the original ones, creating a more vibrant user experience as well as better results for the campaign.

Did Kobe Bryant actually do the jumps or were they fabricated? Judge for yourself:

Aston Martin < http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIWeEFV59d4>
Pool of Snakes <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBJZXyfLrpU&amp;feature=related>

Kind regards,
Pernille Hegnsholt
http://goviral.com/viralradar.php

Euro 2008 Fan Kit

Google’s euro 2008 effort - A nice example of aggregating existing content, and a little bit of development work to create something new:

The 2008 European Championship lasts for 23 days this year, which means 23 days of thrills, hopes, tears and cheers.

To celebrate those 23 days, Google and YouTube have put together a fan kit, so you can share your passion for football with thousands of other fans from around the world!

The Google Fan Map

Explore all the locations for the European Championship and view the latest news and information about your team. Find your favourite spot to watch, play or celebrate football, then share it with the world!

YouTube Fan Diary

Be a part of the YouTube Fan Diary:  http://youtube.com/23days

http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/23days/

The Hottest Thing in Town

New service letting you visualise where people are via your mobile.  Great for marketers but limited for consumers? Thanks to TechCrunch for this post.

Location-Tracking Startup Sense Networks Emerges from Stealth To Answer the Question: Where Is Everybody?

Erick Schonfeld
What if you could look at your cell phone and see a heat map of where everybody in the city was at that very moment? The more people at any given location, the redder it would appear on the map. That’s what Citysense does. It is a mobile application that is supposed to help you figure out where the hottest clubs and night spots are so you can go there (or avoid them, depending on your preference).

It senses where the most popular places are based on the location information emitted by everyone’s cell phones, shows the places with the most activity, and then links into Yelp or Google to help you find out what is at that location. Over time, it learns about where you like to go (fancy restaurants or punk rock clubs) and shows you other people like you, and where they are—right now. And it does all of this anonymously. (You can’t see your where your actual friends are). Citysense only works in San Francisco right now. It is available as a mobile download for the Blackberry and soon for the iPhone as well.

The application is essentially a demonstration for a startup called Sense Networks that is emerging from stealth mode today. Citysense is built on top of the company’s main technology platform, Macrosense. The company ingests billions of data points about people’s location from cell phones, GPS devices, WiFi, and even taxis. The company also collects geo-location data from everyone who downloads Citysense, or any future app (although, the company considers the data to be yours, and you can delete it from the database at any time).

Using machine-learning algorithms, it then indexes all of this location data and ranks places in the real world much like a search engine ranks Websites. But instead of looking at Web links, it looks at how much data (i.e., people) are moving between locations. The company makes money by selling this data in the aggregate to professional investors and financial institutions, who are keen to find out things like where people are shopping.

Sense Networks was founded by MIT computer scientist Alex Pentland and Columbia computer scientist Tony Jebara back in May, 2003. But it remained pretty much a research project until the company was incorporated in 2006. In April, 2008 it raised an A round from hedge funds (including Passport Capital, Drobny Global Asset Management and the Challenge Funds) and angel investors. The amount was not disclosed, but VentureWire reports that it was $3 million.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/09/location-tracking-startup-sense-networks-emerges-from-stealth-to-answer-the-question-where-is-everybody/

Targeting just got lethal

Cheers to AdAge for an interesting use of alternative reality gaming to target a very specific group of people:

Toyota: No One's Targeted Black Women Like This
Alternate-Reality Game Challenges Camry's Rep as 'Suburban,' 'Boring'

By Claude Brodesser-Akner
Published: June 09, 2008

LOS ANGELES (AdAge.com) -- With companywide sales down 8% this May compared with a year ago, every sale suddenly matters to Toyota Motor Corp. And so the carmaker is launching what it calls an "episodic interactive campaign" to connect with a car-buying audience it has never targeted: professional African-American women.

Toyota's 'If Looks Could Kill' interactive site will target African-American women.

The automaker's Camry has been the best-selling car in America for nine of the past 10 years, but it seems African-American consumers would rather hitch their wagons to just about any other brand.

"Here's this nameplate that's ubiquitous," said Monica Warden, account director for Burrell, Toyota's agency of record or African-American advertising. "But for an African-American woman, it's not even in her consideration set. Our preliminary testing found they think of it as suburban, not urban; as solid but boring. And for this woman, she doesn't see herself as boring."

To shift the car's perception and increase purchase consideration, Toyota and Burrell have turned to the Pasadena, Calif.-based 42 Entertainment, a company that specializes in creating alternate-reality games, including a recent innovative viral campaign for Warner Bros.' forthcoming "Batman: The Dark Knight."

In the game, which makes its debut today, Bianca, a good-looking assistant designer at an urban fashion house, finds herself -- and her new 2009 Camry -- enmeshed in a world of espionage. A $5 million print, radio and online campaign that will run in media primarily consumed by African-American women aims to drive the target demographic to iflookscouldkill.com, a site where "fashion and espionage collide," said Susan Bonds, president of 42 Entertainment.

Espionage, mystery

Naturally, Bianca's unwitting involvement in spy tradecraft will be assisted by Camry's onboard Bluetooth, navigation and push-button ignition system, all features that will be "seamlessly integrated" into the content, Ms. Bonds said.

Why Camry hasn't caught on with African-American women is something of a mystery.

If the demographic simply wasn't buying any midprice sedans, one could to point to U.S. Census Bureau statistics that show that black women are the least likely to marry (in 2001, according to the U.S. Census, 41.9% of black women in America had never been married, in contrast to 20.7% of white women) and also the most likely to divorce. Lacking a double income, they might opt for cheaper wheels.

Or one might look to a November 2007 study by New York University's Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy that found that black and Hispanic borrowers were more likely to be steered into subprime loans than others, even adjusting for income, loan size and property location -- indicating they don't have money to buy a car.

But U.S. Census data from 2005 show that black and Asian women with bachelor's degrees earn slightly more than similarly educated white women. And a recent study conducted by Burrell found that black women do buy midprice sedans; they just tend to buy Altimas, Accords and Avengers. Indeed, the Camry was being outsold almost 2-to-1 by Dodge's Avenger among black customers -- a car that suffered from less horsepower and lower fuel mileage than just about every six-cylinder competitor, including the Camry.

Disrupting perceptions

The game developed by 42 Entertainment is designed to target exactly those professional black women between 25 and 40 who earn at least $70,000 a year -- the same group that, Ms.Warden said, had previously written off the car as a suburban yawn.

"They think they know the car, but we're going to disrupt those perceptions," she said. "When you think that someone actually cares enough to make their product relevant to you, it can change your mind."

She added: "No one has ever targeted African-American women like this."

http://adage.com/article?article_id=127615

In car advertising?

Thanks to AdAge for this post.

Why Your Car May Soon Be Driving Digital Advertising

Steve Rubel on Digital Communications
By Steve Rubel
Published: June 02, 2008

If you think there's already enough to distract you in your life, just wait. With Americans spending 100 hours a year commuting, according to the Census Bureau, the internet is coming to your car in a big way -- and not just to the front seat either.

Dashboard navigation systems provide a natural entry point. Year-over-year unit sales of GPS devices grew nearly 500% during the 2007 holiday season, according to NPD.

Several GPS manufacturers such as Tele Atlas, which supplies systems to the automakers, already display the logos of nearby fast-food restaurants' gas stations. However, the screens are quickly getting more useful -- or cluttered, depending on your point of view. Navigon's high-end model, for example, features helpful restaurant reviews and ratings from Zagat.

Soon, devices that can both send and receive data will hit the market. Dash, for example, is integrating Web 2.0 crowdsourcing into its systems, allowing cars to send information back to the company to improve traffic calculations. As mobile broadband becomes more ubiquitous, it's conceivable that these devices will soon talk to your cellphone via Bluetooth and, thus, talk to social networks as well.

With send/receive capabilities and overall bandwidth improving, local contextual advertising, perhaps rich-media-based, is just around the corner. Google already allows users in Europe to send directions from the web to maps on connected dashboards. Microsoft is working in a system through its Sync technology to provide ad-supported, location-based information for which users would normally pay. (Disclosure: Microsoft and Zagat are clients of Edelman, my employer.)

The back seat offers perhaps more immediate promise for TV advertisers in search of new venues. In March Sirius and Chrysler launched an in-car video network called Backseat TV. The subscription service carries kids programming from Nickelodeon, the Disney Channel and Cartoon Network. Kids weaned on the service will surely demand more as the technology gets more sophisticated, perhaps to the chagrin of parents.

And therein lies the rub: Marketers will need to strike a careful balance to protect privacy and to not push into a space that many consider sacrosanct. However, given the size and captive nature of the in-car audience, the digital-advertising potential is becoming very clear.

http://adage.com/article?article_id=127433

Understanding teenagers in the digital space

This posts aims to investigate who teenagers are, how they use the Internet, and how we should be targeting them. 

[Thanks to Sramana Mitra for this post]

Teenagers are trendsetters and are early adopters and they total 33 million in the U.S. They are also aspirational in nature. They prefer to stay ahead of the pack. Research shows that 67% of the teenagers in the U.S. own a mobile phone and 45% of them have iPods. 32% of the teenagers play computer or video games frequently. According to CBSNews.com poll, teenagers on average spend 2.9 hours surfing the Internet daily and are among the most avid users of the Internet.

87% of the teenagers log on to the Internet from their home whereas around 75% of the teens log on from school or a friend’s house. The Internet is a vital part of the teenagers’ education process and 90% of the teens in the U.S. use the Internet to research school assignments. 88% of the teenagers’ use the Internet for email, 82% Instant Messaging, 68% social networking and 60% download music. Compared to 16% of adults, 28% of the teenagers have blogs and it is an important medium for them to share personal news and commentary.

According to reports published by USA Today an estimated 65% of undergraduates in US colleges are members of TheFacebook.com and an approximate 900,000 high school students hold accounts with either MySpace.com or Xanga.com. Teenagers dislike intrusive advertising but don’t mind brand messages and product placements, if they are informative or are subtle, especially, humorous.

Teen Favorites

According to Teenage Research Unlimited (TRU) 34% of the teenagers aged 12 to 19, ranked MySpace.com as their favorite website. Yahoo.com was second with 19% votes and Google.com claimed the third spot with 14% votes. They use Google.com and Yahoo.com to either check mail or search material for their assignments or stuff that they would like to buy or are curious about.

Social Networking is very popular among the teenagers and most of them spend on an average one hour daily to either post or read postings. MySpace.com, TheFacebook.com, Xanga.com and Tagged.com are the most popular social networking websites among the teenagers. Video and photo-sharing websites like YouTube.com and Flickr.com are fast catching on with the teens, who are creating profiles and sharing their videos and photo collections. iTunes is another favorite of the teens. Sports sites like ESPN.com are popular among the male teens.

Visit Alexa for the top 9 websites visited by teenagers.

Why Teenagers?

Teenagers are not into online shopping as only 6% shops online. However, they do spend a lot of time researching products online, which they intend to buy. Teenagers directly and indirectly control billions of dollars in purchasing power and according to TRU, teenagers helped spend around $159 billion in 2005 and this amount is expected to grow by 5% CAGR in the next 5 years. Since teens spend a lot of time online, marketers want to use the Internet to grab the eyeballs, create brand awareness and build brand loyalty among the teenagers who influence family purchase decisions.

Such has been the popularity of the Internet media that Teen People a popular teenage magazine has withdrawn its print edition and decided to concentrate on its website ONLY. According to TNS Media Intelligence advertisement revenues for TeenPeople.com has grown six folds from 2004 to 2005 indicating a strategic shift in advertising and elevating the Internet as the most preferred medium. Elle Girl also withdrew its print edition and is currently available only on the Net.

Teenagers today spend more time (average 2.9 hours) on the Internet than they spend reading newspaper or magazines. Online newspapers and magazines along with blogs are more interesting and spontaneous for these next generation kids as it provides them with an interactive platform to share views across the globe. eMarketer forecasts ad spending on social networking to reach $2 billion by 2010 and projects video ad spending to rise 82.2% in 2006 and 89.0% in 2007.

Prospective employers, college admissions offices, and marketers are logging on to social networking websites like MySpace.com to gather information about the teenagers and to fine tune their product and service offerings according to the teenagers’ preferences. These websites give a very good idea of what’s their on the teenagers’ mind. As teenagers discuss among themselves, marketers can find out, which sports, food, apparel, gadgets, cars are on the top of their mind.

Business Model

A large portion of the advertising dollars are shifting from traditional mediums like print and television to the digital media. Video game companies have radically shifted their marketing dollars to the web, and in fact, they are themselves becoming good places to advertise, as inline advertise in computer games become popular.

According to Fuse a youth-marketing agency, online advertising is much cheaper than other forms of advertising and could be done with a budget of $2,000 to $3,000. According to experts online advertising provides more bang for every dollar spend than print or television.

Advertisement revenues are the main source of revenues for these websites. The advertising rates for Yahoo start with low minimum monthly subscriptions ranging from $10 to $50. The average cost per click for teenage category is $0.12 while the overall cost per click is $0.07, which implies the cost-effective pricing for advertising space targeted at teenagers. Advertising can be placed on most websites with a budget of $3000. Attractive discounts are offered to advertisers with budgets over $10,000.

Social networking has experienced phenomenal growth in the past year and marketers are more than willing to associate with them as they see it as a wonderful opportunity to reach out to their target customer. U.S. ad spend on social networking is expected to be $865 million in 2007 and MySpace.com will account for $525 million or 60% of the total ad spend in 2007.

Though social networking on the Internet is a huge success, most of the websites are burning cash today and it will take a while before they generate profits. ClassMates.com a social networking website, which attracts around 125,000 visits daily and has over 3.5 million registered members from 30,000 High Schools, is a profitable venture.

Venture Capital, M&A and PE Activity

With the strong growth in revenues and profits of new age media companies like Google and Yahoo and the soaring popularity of Internet businesses like MySpace.com and YouTube.com, Venture Capital and Private Equity Firms are back scouting and investing in similar Internet businesses, especially those targeted at the youth. The social networking space targeted is experiencing a lot of investment from venture capitalists. VC’s expect Internet to be their preferred medium of communication. Teenage social networking is a niche segment that has exhibited significant growth in the past two years.

Below are details of some VC fundings of websites that are targeted at teenagers:

[Note: Friendster number is the recapitalized number.]

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation bought MySpace.com in mid 2005 for $580 million and today it is the fastest growing social network with over 140 million users. Google bought out YouTube.com in October 2006 for $1.65 billion. United Online acquired Classmates.com for $131.4 million in November 2004.

Competitive Market but Opportunity in Niche

Major media companies like Google, Yahoo, Viacom, News Corp. and AOL are all trying to woo the teenagers. Everyone wants a piece of the pie and so the Internet is full of clones of social networking, video and photo-sharing sites and with start-up costs low and VCs more than willing to fund new ventures in this space, it has resulted in over-crowding of the space. 2007 is expected to witness fierce competition in the social media space, and a lot of carcasses. Behavioral science shows that teenagers are fickle-minded and tend to change their tastes frequently. It is tough to hold on to their interest levels.

There is opportunity in niche websites targeted at teenagers as they spend a lot of time surfing the net. Research by Youth Trends show that young teens prefer visiting sites dedicated to them. If they are provided with quality, dynamic content, user friendly interface, with a chance to interact and play among themselves, it will appeal to them. Flip.com, a niche site for teenage girls by Publisher Conde Nast is slated to be launched in 2007, plans to do just that. Social networks still do not have adequate ROI metrics and this could be an opportunity for new generation networks to attract advertising dollars by leveraging the strength of their parent companies. In this case, CondeNast owns the popular fashion magazine Vogue, which might be able to direct both important celebrities, content and key advertisers their way.

Conclusion

Teenagers are being chased by the entrepreneurs, media companies and advertising dollars. iPod and iTunes became a massive hit by using the teenager segment as their penetration point. It remains to be seen who else does a comparably good job in leveraging this segment’s tremendous online presence and early-adoption capabilities. Obvious players in the Education industry are dogs, and sadly, they have not at all woken up to social networking’s significant potential in educating teenagers.

http://sramanamitra.com/articles/segments-and-lifestyles/teenagers/

How to connect with teenage girls in cyber space - legally of course!

This is an interesting blog looking at how the fashion industry is using an existing gaming platform to make money, rather then generating content which they hope teenagers will engage with. 

How will other retailers embrace social networking and other interactive technologies to help them build their brands?

Thanks to Forbes.com for this post.

Teenagers are easy to reach if you know how to play their game.

For the fashion industry, traditionally a late adopter of technology, it has been a particularly steep learning experience even though pre-teens and teens directly and indirectly control billions of dollars in purchasing power. But a small Swedish company called Stardoll seems to have cracked the code on how to hook young girls (see Teen Market Overview).

Stardoll is an online community where girls ages 8 to 18 play with virtual dolls. They can make "MeDolls," dolls that look like themselves, or celebrity look-alike dolls. Girls can also dress themselves and celebrities with merchandise from a virtual shop in its virtual galleria called the "starplaza," and they can also network with other users on the site.

Join the discussion: Will retailers embrace social networking and other interactive technologies to help them build their brands? Tell us what you think in the Readers Comments section below.

Stardoll Chief Executive Mattias Miksche admits he didn't completely understand his market when he began heading the company a few years ago. "When I first saw the initial site I didn't really get it--like most men," he says. "But I showed it to my wife, who was 35, and to my daughter, who was 5--and they both absolutely loved it. So I figured there could be quite an untapped market there."

Today, Stockholm-based Stardoll features more than 330 dolls and tens of thousands of virtual garments and accessories. It is also the No. 1 site worldwide for pre-teen and teen girls, according to comScore. The site has over 7 million unique visitors per month and 16 million registered users from 200 countries.

Compare these numbers to TeenVogue, Conde Nast's magazine that targets the same demographic and has less than 3 million readers. TeenVogue's mission statement says: "Style-conscious girls everywhere know there's only one source for relevant fashion and beauty news communicated in a sophisticated tone with the power of the Vogue brand. In a time of expanding media choices, true authority is irreplaceable--and unmistakable."

Is it?

Stardoll, like Vogue, earns revenues from advertising. Advertisers on Stardoll include major fashion and entertainment brands such as Donna Karan, LVMH, Disney (nyse: DIS - news - people ) and Sephora. Stardoll also earns revenues from products sold in its virtual shop. The site sells between 60,000 to 180,000 items per day.

Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures think Stardoll is building an addictive destination for a prized demographic, and they have invested $10 million in the company.

Despite Stardoll's success, the fashion industry hasn't yet figured out how to take advantage of the company to help it build brands. Here's an example of how this might work.

Zara, a retailer based in Spain, launches a virtual collection on Stardoll, which becomes an instant viral hit among pre-teen and teenage girls. Let's say seven designs in the collection bubble up to the top as the most popular, each with an average following of 1.2 million girls. Knowing this, would Zara need any other focus group or market research to figure out exactly what is striking a chord with its target consumers?

If Zara becomes really disciplined, it can pre-launch each season's designs into Stardoll, collect market feedback and provide that data to its stores around the world. Zara can also do geographically targeted research through Stardoll. For instance, Zara's Florida stores can look at data for Florida consumers, while Los Angeles stores can drill down on what teens in L.A. like.

I spent a year working with the fashion industry during the dot-com heydays, and I was struck by how little science and analysis is applied in the fashion business. As a result, the industry remains a nightmare of surplus inventory, which leads to markdowns and unhealthy profit-and-loss statements that precariously balance companies at the edge of life and death.

But it doesn't need to be this way. Other industries, such as financial services, manufacturing and insurance, have embraced technology and benefited tremendously from its infinite potential. Why not fashion?

http://www.forbes.com/technology/ebusiness/2008/05/29/mitra-stardoll-retail-tech-ebiz-cx_sm_0530stardoll.html

Billboards That Look Back

Putting the eye in EYE Media? This post is with thanks to The New York Times.

Billboards That Look Back

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD
Published: May 31, 2008

In advertising these days, the brass ring goes to those who can measure everything — how many people see a particular advertisement, when they see it, who they are. All of that is easy on the Internet, and getting easier in television and print.

Billboards are a different story. For the most part, they are still a relic of old-world media, and the best guesses about viewership numbers come from foot traffic counts or highway reports, neither of which guarantees that the people passing by were really looking at the billboard, or that they were the ones sought out.

Now, some entrepreneurs have introduced technology to solve that problem. They are equipping billboards with tiny cameras that gather details about passers-by — their gender, approximate age and how long they looked at the billboard. These details are transmitted to a central database.

Behind the technology are small start-ups that say they are not storing actual images of the passers-by, so privacy should not be a concern. The cameras, they say, use software to determine that a person is standing in front of a billboard, then analyze facial features (like cheekbone height and the distance between the nose and the chin) to judge the person’s gender and age. So far the companies are not using race as a parameter, but they say that they can and will soon.

The goal, these companies say, is to tailor a digital display to the person standing in front of it — to show one advertisement to a middle-aged white woman, for example, and a different one to a teenage Asian boy.

“Everything we do is completely anonymous,” said Paolo Prandoni, the founder and chief scientific officer of Quividi, a two-year-old company based in Paris that is gearing up billboards in the United States and abroad. Quividi and its competitors use small digital billboards, which tend to play short videos as advertisements, to reach certain audiences.

Over Memorial Day weekend, a Quividi camera was installed on a billboard on Eighth Avenue near Columbus Circle in Manhattan that was playing a trailer for “The Andromeda Strain,” a mini-series on the cable channel A&E.

“I didn’t see that at all, to be honest,” said Sam Cocks, a 26-year-old lawyer, when the camera was pointed out to him by a reporter. “That’s disturbing. I would say it’s arguably an invasion of one’s privacy.”

Organized privacy groups agree, though so far the practice of monitoring billboards is too new and minimal to have drawn much opposition. But the placement of surreptitious cameras in public places has been a flashpoint in London, where cameras are used to look for terrorists, as well as in Lower Manhattan, where there is a similar initiative.

Although surveillance cameras have become commonplace in banks, stores and office buildings, their presence takes on a different meaning when they are meant to sell products rather than fight crime. So while the billboard technology may solve a problem for advertisers, it may also stumble over issues of public acceptance.

“I guess one would expect that if you go into a closed store, it’s very likely you’d be under surveillance, but out here on the street?” Mr. Cocks asked. At the least, he said, there should be a sign alerting people to the camera and its purpose.

Quividi’s technology has been used in Ikea stores in Europe and McDonald’s restaurants in Singapore, but it has just come to the United States. Another Quividi billboard is in a Philadelphia commuter station with an advertisement for the Philadelphia Soul, an indoor football team. Both Quividi-equipped boards were installed by Motomedia, a London-based company that converts retail and street space into advertisements.

“I think a big part of why it’s accepted is that people don’t know about it,” said Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group.

“You could make them conspicuous,” he said of video cameras. “But nobody really wants to do that because the more people know about it, the more it may freak them out or they may attempt to avoid it.”


And the issue gets thornier: the companies that make these systems, like Quividi and TruMedia Technologies, say that with a slight technological addition, they could easily store pictures of people who look at their cameras.

The companies say they do not plan to do this, but Mr. Tien said he thought their intentions were beside the point. The companies are not currently storing video images, but they could if compelled by something like a court order, he said.

For now, “there’s nothing you could go back to and look at,” said George E. Murphy, the chief executive of TruMedia who was previously a marketing executive at DaimlerChrysler. “All it needs to do is look at the audience, process what it sees and convert that to digital fields that we upload to our servers.”

TruMedia’s technology is an offshoot of surveillance work for the Israeli government. The company, whose slogan is “Every Face Counts,” is testing the cameras in about 30 locations nationwide. One TruMedia client is Adspace Networks, which runs a network of digital screens in shopping malls and is testing the system at malls in Chesterfield, Mo., Winston-Salem, N.C., and Monroeville, Pa. Adspace’s screens show a mix of content, like the top retail deals at the mall that day, and advertisements for DVDs, movies or consumer products.

Within advertising circles, these camera systems are seen as a welcome answer to the longstanding problem of how to measure the effectiveness of billboards, and how to figure out what audience is seeing them. On television, Nielsen ratings help marketers determine where and when commercials should run, for example. As for signs on highways, marketers tend to use traffic figures from the Transportation Department; for pedestrian billboards, they might hire someone to stand nearby and count people as they walk by.

The Internet, though, where publishers and media agencies can track people’s clicks for advertising purposes, has raised the bar on measurement. Now, it is prodding billboards into the 21st century.

“Digital has really changed the landscape in the sort of accuracy we can get in terms of who’s looking at our creative,” Guy Slattery, senior vice president for marketing for A&E, said of Internet advertising. With Quividi, Mr. Slattery said, he hoped to get similar information from what advertisers refer to as the out-of-home market.

“We’re always interested in getting accurate data on the audience we’re reaching,” he said, “and for out-of-home, this promises to give a level of accuracy we’re not used to seeing in this medium.”

Industry groups are scrambling to provide their own improved ways of measuring out-of-home advertising. An outdoor advertising association, the Traffic Audit Bureau, and a digital billboard and sign association, the Out-of-Home Video Advertising Association, are both devising more specific measurement standards that they plan to release by the fall.

Even without cameras, digital billboards encounter criticism. In cities like Indianapolis and Pittsburgh, outdoor advertising companies face opposition from groups that call their signs unsightly, distracting to drivers and a waste of energy.

There is a dispute over whether digital billboards play a role in highway accidents, and a national study on the subject is expected to be completed this fall by a unit of the Transportation Research Board. The board is part of a private nonprofit institution, the National Research Council.

Meanwhile, privacy concerns about cameras are growing. In Britain, which has an estimated 4.2 million closed-circuit television cameras — one for every 14 people — the matter has become a hot political issue, with some legislators proposing tight restrictions on the use and distribution of the footage.

Reactions to the A&E billboard in Manhattan were mixed. “I don’t want to be in the marketing,” said Antwann Thomas, 17, a high school junior, after being told about the camera. “I guess it’s kind of creepy. I wouldn’t feel safe looking at it.”

But other passers-by shrugged. “Someone down the street can watch you looking at it — why not a camera?” asked Nathan Lichon, 25, a Navy officer.

Walter Peters, 39, a truck driver for a dairy, said: “You could be recorded on the street, you could be recorded in a drugstore, whatever. It doesn’t matter to me. There’s cameras everywhere.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/31/business/media/31billboard.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th

Web habits determine ad serving