YouTube introduces "skippable" video ads. Uh oh.
Well it was good while it lasted. While television networks and advertisers morned the introduction of commercial fast forwarding on television, they have found solace online, where consumers have consigned themselves to sitting through pre-rolls and interstitials if it means streaming high quality video content.
YouTube is trying to change all that. The video giant today announced today that it is launching "skippable" pre-roll ads on some of its videos. The move will help YouTube create better ads, charge better rates for the ads that are seen and improve its ad model. It could also lead to further erosion of video ad views overall, which networks won't be happy about.
The good news: networks won't have to worry about that for a while.
Twitter's new retweet feature paves the way for more commercial usage
Rage is a common response when social media sites make minor tweaks to their services, and characteristically, Twitter's new retweet change is causing lots of outrage from users (Gawker headlined its post "Re-Tweet Redesign Helps the Rich Get Richer on Twitter").
Trying to solve some of the issues surrounding the "RT" functionality, Twitter has done away with it completely in favor of reposting a tweet from the original twitterer, with a link to the person who retweeted it (an example is above).
There are some drawbacks to the new approach, but helps Twitter do two things that will become increasingly important to its business model: track tweets and make them more reliable for professional users.
Is online video destined to look like television programming?
Terrestrial television has been gutted by commercial fast-forwarding, but online that is not an option. And as much as people complain about pre-roll ads, they are increasingly watch them. As Brian Stelter notes in The New York Times today: "News Web sites are starting to look a lot less like newspapers and a lot more like television."
Can the networks reproduce the success of their old business model online by creating a limited quantity of quality video programming? Yes and no.
Razorfish: Social media is helping established brands. But what about everyone else?
Razorfish has released its annual study into consumer behavior online and this year's results have a lot to do with social media. According to Feed: The Razorfish Digital Brand Experience Report, many consumers are engaging with brands online to receive exclusive promotions or discounts.
The study also found that people who actively engage with a brand digitally — from participating in a contest to downloading a mobile application — are substantially more inclined to purchase and recommend that brand to others.
The question for brands is how to create digital events that impress consumers. Because negative experiences online have a bad influence on the bottom line for brands.
FOX plants its digital flag with Strategy Room
The cable companies may be hard at work planning their transition to online video with TV Everywhere, but Fox News has another method of bridging the gap between television and online — developing talent and shows in real time.
Every week day, over eight hours of programming are streamed online from Strategy Room, Fox News' web video "network." The online-only program operates out of a small corner of News Corp.'s New York office, and may not be getting insane traffic, but it's been a proving ground for Fox talent. And it appears to be working.
A book with a view: Andrew Sullivan's crowdsourced book pricing scheme
Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish blog may be best known for political content, but its most popular feature is party agnostic and user generated. Over the last three years, readers have submitted photos of scenes snapped from their windows, for a weekly featured titled "The View From Your Window."
Amid hundreds of photos and growing interest, The Atlantic has now chosen 200 of those images and produced a coffee table book. The front and back images have been crowd sourced. But that's not as interesting as the price tag, which depends on how many people purchase the book.
Google acquires AdMob: solidifies place in the mobile ad market
Google may have its fingers in a lot of pots when it comes to digital advertising, but to date, it has not replicated its runaway success in search. While the company may be late to market with its online display advertising play, Google is not risking the same fate in mobile.
From the Android to mobile search, Google has been making plays there for months. And with today's acquisition of AdMob, the search giant will have more of its bases covered in that market.
Gamers coming clean on scam ads: Is contrition enough?
The social gaming lead-gen controversy sparked by TechCrunch's Michael Arrington came to an end this week when OfferPal, the company he singled out for scamming users and advertisers, replaced its CEO and posted a mea culpa for its past and current practices.
Beyond that, Facebook, MySpace and mega gamer Zynga have made moves this week to better regulate gaming offers. Will the move decimate the social gaming industry?
Brand tweets sends twitterers searching
Twitter's traffic may be flatlining at the moment, but Performics and ROI Research have come out with good news for marketers: Twitter users pay attention to brands on the service.
That may seem obvious to anyone who's ever promoted a product on Twitter. But the new study, announced today at Ad:Tech new York by Performics Marketing senior vice president Michael Kahn, also found that almost half of twitterers who have been introduced to a brand on Twitter have subsequently gone on to search for more information about it. If true, that's a big deal.
Nielsen: Search matters for retail, but you can't ignore display
What matters more for online retailers: display advertising or search? It's likely not an either or answer, but it's a question that has been the subject of an ongoing debate in our comments section this week.
I wrote this post after reading an AdAge article that implied search only accounted for 10% of traffic sent to online retail sites. Abby Klaasen wrote:
"Nielsen found the majority of retailers' web traffic (61%, on average) comes from people going directly to a retail site -- consumers typing, say, Amazon.com into a browser address bar."
The idea that only 10% of traffic would be driven by search was new to me, and we asked our readers to weigh in with their own experiences. Many were surprised and confused by Nielsen's numbers (and there is a ton of information in those comments for anyone interested in the subject).
I spoke with Kenneth Cassar, Nielsen's VP of industry insights, to get some clarification. And as always, it turns out that context is key with these numbers.
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Graham Charlton
Strategy & Planning
