Tag: IPG-Emerging-Media-Lab

The Future Of TV Starts With A Name Change

Posted on by Lab Team

There comes a time where naming conventions seem to hold back progress.

If we still called music “cassettes” it would be hard to imagine the effect this would have had on the way products like iTunes or services like Spotify would have been developed and marketed.

It strikes me that the future of TV , in terms of how content is searched for, found and viewed and how TV advertising manifests, is being hampered by the concept of TV and it’s antiquated name.

TV’s used to be large boxes in the home that you watched TV shows on, that were broadcast by TV companies on TV Channels.

Especially in the UK and Europe, you were quite likely to sit down at watch Channel Number X for the evening.

Increasingly these separate TV based units are becoming meaningless, the notion of a TV channel seems rather strange, even the idea of a “show” made for TV seems a little odd in an era of long and short form content on Vimeo, Youtube, News Websites etc.

A new name is required and with it a new way of thinking.
Much like we used to talk about records then cassettes, then CD’s and then MP3’s, each with their own cassette player, discman etc, we now just talk about music.
We now need to think not about DVD’s and TV Channels and Set top boxes, but about what it is Video.

Our TV’s are on the edge of being nothing to do with TV. They are merely large screen through which to play video.

We no longer sit down and “tune in” to see what is “on”, increasingly we sit down and think about specific content we watch. Smart TV’s like Samsung with their S- Recommendation engines now surface content based on our behavior and regardless of the format of content and the pipeline that brought it. Your thirst for soccer could be quenched by Live Soccer on Fox Soccer, a match on your DVR, an iTunes hosted video of the top goals ever, or highlights for free on Youtube.

Thinking of the TV as large screen for video allows the imagination to rethink other aspects. As an agency that seeks to serve the needs of brands, why are we now bound by the limitations and expense ofTV advertising.

TV Advertising can be done more accurately.
Digital TV’s can record data about your behavior and can work at an individual level, you now no longer need to buy a show, you can buy a individual house at a specific moment in time.

TV Advertising can be linked to an action.
You are now showing video to people on a large connected screen. Opportunities to buy products featured in shows will soon become common, as will click to find out more, or click to enter competitions

TV Advertising can be done more creatively.
With targeting down to a household ads can be served sequentially to build a narrative and ads can now be based on real time context or other data to make ads richer. They could pull in your feeds from you social graph, show what your friends think of the products etc.

TV Advertising can be done more measurably.
Any action based creative can be used to measure response in real time, thus providing ways for advertisers to test creative.

Even more than this advertising can now be served more quickly and much more cheaply/

So my only question remains, with this new world of the large screen and richer ad experiences, what does the TV’s new name become?Screen Shot 2013-04-11 at 9.30.58 PM

Mobile advertising – turning the dream into a reality.

Posted on by Lab Team

Since about 2005, every year has been the year when mobile advertising was going to explode.

In 2013 it’s expected Mobile Ad revenue will top $11.4bn after growing 20% in the last year, so it’s pretty safe to say we now live in a world where Mobile advertising has arrived and predictions now show over the next 5 years mobile ad revenue will rise faster than any other media.

While this sounds hugely impressive, by two key measurements Mobile advertising is failing to live up to expectations.

1) The revenues are not keeping pace with the time spent on the media, we now spend 4.5% percent of our time on mobile, but yet only 1.7% of ad spend is on the channel, and this gap is rising as smartphones become ever more popular and ever more used.

2) The value of mobile ads are still low, a typical CPM of $1.31, about 1/3rd of other digital ads and around 1/20th of TV.

What’s more the ability to monetize mobile traffic has never been greater, it’s the largest challenge facing some of the most important companies of our time, be it Facebook, Twitter or any content provider without a paywall.

But what most disappoints me is the very unambitious and extremely uncreative way that people have looked at mobile as advertising platform, it reminds me of how most digital ads have completely failed to make the most of the unique opportunities the channel has to connect with people in incredible ways.

Allow me to follow a brief journey through the history of digital advertising:

1995
Digital ads first appeared around 1994 with the world’s first pop up ad and some banner ads. While this may have been an entirely new media channel, the thinking was basically taking existing print ads like loose leaf ads and newspaper ads, and simply finding digital equivalents.

2005
Around ten years later with much faster internet access speeds allowed video to be streamed and as a result people took 30 second TV ads, chopped them down to 15 seconds and the world of pre-roll ads was born.

It strikes me that this timeline shows how incredibly poor innovation in the space has been, while we may see page dominant ads, or expandable banners, or MPU units, basically the entire world of digital advertising, a new paradigm of targeting, connectivity, measurement, real time, personalized content, and what we got was traditional ads repurposed.

Mobile seems no different.
Whether it was using SMS as a way to clumsily impart basic information or the decision that the mobile internet should be turned into screen real estate in exactly the same way that we approached physical newspapers, the quality , functionality and ambition has remained low.

What I don’t get has been the way that we’ve approached both digital and especially mobile as a screen. Just simply space to take up and put in front of eyeballs.
mobile ads
Our mobiles are far more than screens, they are our diary’s, our address books, our things to do lists, our maps, our photo albums, our location beacons, our coupon collectors and more, in many peoples cases they are their wallets.

The opportunities for mobile marketing are incredible, but it won’t come from thinking of the mobile as a small screen we take everywhere, but as a device that can remind us to do things, tell us where things are, keep our shopping lists, and so on.

And as our phones start to understand more about how we behave and where we are, the opportunities for mobiles to start predicting our behavior and make suggestions to us at the right time and the right place, will soon make advertising as a service the true moment where Mobile advertising really has arrived.

More on predictive computing and the true value of mobile advertising later.

Superbowl Ads From The Eyes Of A Brit

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Watching the Superbowl as a Brit it was hard to escape two overriding feelings.

One- The Superbowl doesn’t really seem to be about the sport, instead all those people clattering into each other are rather background to the whole thing, people talk over the action, nobody really supports a side with any vigor and people come and go as the event goes on. The whole thing seems more about sport as an excuse to get together, chat , eat and talk about ads.

The second realization is that for a nation that spends it’s entire year doing everything it can to avoid ads, this seems to be this one curious window where people actually like ads, scrub that, they LOVE the ads, they talk about the ads, they laugh at the ads, they may even listen to them and remember them. For months it’s like ad agencies have rubbed their hands together knowing that for this one time, people will actually be watching and actually may care about what you have to say. That’s rather puzzling to me.

It’s not like this in the UK. While we don’t love ads, we have a curious relationship with them, they are at worst tolerated and at best, beloved. We have TV shows in primetime that celebrate the best ads from around the world. And you can understand why, most TV ads in the UK are rather gentle and sophisticated “films”.  They are often creative narratives with pleasant storylines, feature nice plinky plonky music, they cajole and entertain, and smuther you and endear you. It’s not like that in the US, and I understand why most US ad breaks with their shouty patronizing interruption are not welcome.

It did get me thinking, how is it in a world where we now have no attention span, where we do several things at once, where so many people skip ads on DVD’s and if they do view them, they do so in the context of frustration, why on earth do we still have ad “breaks”?  What rationale is there behind stopping the thing we want to watch, then taking 7 mins or more with the entire screen removed of the thing we were paying attention to, and either force people to put up with “paid interruption” or more likely, tempt them to put on the cooker or do something else for a bit.

What’s the need for the break? Would people not pay more attention to the screen and therefore the ad like message if they were not on together?

Why have we not more found ways to embed messages within the broadcast simultaneously and maybe as a way to add value and meaning?  Sure we have “sponsorships” and logo’s and wardrobes provided (seemingly always by Ralph Lauren), but why not feature more things akin to banner advertisements, or branded utility, and do away with the entire concept of a “ad break” .

I’d love to do some research at the lab and find out if it’s better to get half of someones attentions while they are watching the show, or to take up the full screen when they are not. I’d love also to think of creative ways to get ad content and viewing content blended together in ways far more sophisticated that current techniques like sponsorship and product placement.

 

Joining The Dots

Posted on by Lab Team

I think sometimes we look at things in a lens that is too focused.

For many years we’ve looked and laughed at internet enabled fridges and tweeting plants but to make sense future thinking people have  taken a step back and had the imagination to see the whole ecosystem of the connected home, a world where you can turn on your cooker from work, or check to see if you have left the garage door closed.

But I still think these use cases are rather pathetic, relatively fringe and certainly not providing enough value to make the $15k investment in an entirely connected home worthwhile.

But when you really take a step back, where you vision includes things that seem rather peripheral,  you can begin then to  join a lot of things together that show how amazing things could happen.

I don’t think we are far from a world where the world of advertising starts becoming less the use of creativity to get brands and consumers to connect and engage, but a world where creativity is used to allow brands to provide value to consumers. The process of agencies like the IPG Media lab will be to have the imagination but also the knowledge of fringe technology to join the dots together and to do so in the context of business and brands.

We are talking of a world of both creative business models and branded utility.

I think in less than 3 years a connected home will include a fridge that knows what products we like, what food we have, when it is about to turn bad, where we are going to be that week, who we may expect to have come and visit.

This may seem rather out there, but it’s a simple question of taking in some of the utility that apps like “Slice” provide now, advancing it a little, and then pulling data from your google calendar, location and other sources to help suggest solutions, or as we like to call it, the world of “anticipatory computing”

In a world like this, an online grocery company could subsidize the cost of your fridge by ensuring that it will only be able to order goods from their own site.

You may find that you never run out of milk because it’s ordered before it’s about to go bad or run out.

You may find ads for food products that sync with your fridge and tell you what else you need to order to make a suggested recipe and order it for you.

This is world far removed from the now, but not because the technology is so advanced, but because our attitude towards “advertising” shifts away from technology as an enabler of better brand messaging, but technology as an enabler of better brand solutions.

Three reasons Android could terminate Apple

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Best blogs of 2009 The smartphone market seems to be shoe-in: Apple has got momentum in the space reminiscent of their takeover of the MP3 player market years prior with the iPod. Despite this momentum, the discerning media planner working on mobile for six months out should take note – Google’s Android is poised to crash Apple’s party.

Android Clones: While the iPhone had Chinese imitation devices, Android will literally have a clone army. The open source system will live on a handful of devices by the end of this year, and dozens of devices by the end of 2010. So while the system seemed to languish when the only Android device was the G1, with phones like the HTC Hero and myTouch 3G, Android will traverse carrier networks and handset manufactures. Continue reading “Three reasons Android could terminate Apple”

The battle over wireless networks begins

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The battle for net neutrality begins (iStock)The FCC has thrown down the gauntlet about network neutrality. While there is a case to be made both for and against a government mandated network neutrality, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is strongly making the case for it. He’s working to have the FCC’s current governing principals turned into hard-coded rules, and to increase the four to six, adding in a principal regarding network non-discrimination (aka neutrality) and one on transparency and openness.
Those are some fighting words.

The FCC has so far skirted around the issues of network neutrality, ruling in ways that indicated their support of the concept, but not calling it out specifically. This latest move is going to cause ripples. Continue reading “The battle over wireless networks begins”

Netflix’s crowdsourced victory

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Netflix's crowdsourced victory (Netflix)Three years and one million dollers later, Netflix has an improved ratings and recommendation system, and months of free advertising in the lead up to a jubuilent conclusion for the BellKore Pragmatic Chaos team. Thousands of teams from across the world submitted their ideas, ultimately leading to a final round of mergings which brought team BellKore across the finish line 20 minutes before their primary competitor, Ensemble.

The experiment is a three-fold triumph: For Netflix (the company’s stock has been steadily climbing over this year and was up .30 on Monday when the results were announced); For the wider technology community who will get to benefit from the winning team’s algorithms–publishing methods was one of the stated requirements of the competition; and for the infinite possibilities of crowdsourcing–both as a problem solving and a marketing tool. Continue reading “Netflix’s crowdsourced victory”

Emmys acknowledge role of digital platforms

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Emmys acknowledge interactive (Academy of Arts and Sciences)This year I sat in on the blue ribbon panel for judging the final winners of 2009 Emmy Awards for Creative Achievement in Interactive Media for Fiction and Non-Fiction.  As a member of the executive committee for the Interactive Media Peer Group for the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, it’s been a big year for interactive plays in all television content.

As announced earlier this summer, below are the 2009 Primetime Emmy Awards Nominees for Outstanding Creative Achievement in Interactive Media: Continue reading “Emmys acknowledge role of digital platforms”

Deca: Online audiences are “tribes”

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Deca TV on the future of online content (Momversations/IPG Lab's Content Tuesday)This week as a part of an ongoing webinar series on online content opportunities, the IPG Emerging Media Lab welcomed Michael Wayne, President and CEO of DECA (Digital Entertainment Corporation of America). DECA is not about big splashy production, or name Hollywood talent – instead they are successfully delivering content that is “of the Web, by the Web, and for the Web.” Their programming model is focused on creating information based formats that leverage already established web talent in verticals like Moms and Cooking. We see DECA as a leader in the emerging content space and great partner for brands that are looking to dip a toe or jump head first into the waters of emerging content.

We are asking Content Tuesday presenters to answer a set of questions about their business and the emerging content industry. We think each of these POVs will be a valuable resource as we look to collectively shape best practices and bring solutions to our clients. After the jump, hear from Michael about what DECA is doing in the online content space, and what the company sees for the future of online video. Continue reading “Deca: Online audiences are “tribes””

From moon landings to media labs

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Moon landings, new media, and black plastic frame glasses (iStock)This week marks the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing. I remember that event vividly: in my classroom huddled around a small portable television our teacher rolled in on a wobbly TV cart; those fuzzy pictures, the network anchors explaining what was going on in space with small plastic models, scenes of NASA engineers all wearing geeky black plastic-framed glasses ( which now have somehow come back into style). At the time as I sat there watching this incredible event happening, I thought that I was the luckiest kid in the world.

It was also the first major multimedia moment of my life. I remember my parents later talking about the TV in the classroom, and marveling about the opportunity that this new technology offered for my future. If only they had known how prophetic that conversation was. Continue reading “From moon landings to media labs”