Marketing Madness in 60 Seconds: 7/17/07

Advertising/Marketing

People are voluntarily sharing more information than ever before even as they don’t want advertisers mining their online behavior for the purposes of serving up ads, despite research that shows ad relevance – and subsequently click rates – go up as a result. That’s an interesting paradox of the current age that’s free of easy answers.

People say they don’t go online for product and service recommendations but frequently share their own experiences and recommendations on those social sites. That seeming contrary behavior doesn’t mean brands are free to not participate and in fact should absolutely do so if they wish to remain relevant.

More coverage of the “sponsored posts” issue, this time focusing specifically on “mommybloggers” – the favorite of PR people everywhere for their influence and social circle – and the way they interact with the brands that are keen to get their attention. All of this has prompted one blogger to call for a “PR Blackout” week among mommybloggers that would be free of sponsored posts, product reviews and other such material and instead get back to moms talking about their kids, marriages and other topics that the blogs are *supposed* to be about. Caroline McCarthy points out that a week is not exactly a major period of time and highlights other wholes in the entire frustrating issue.

Nielsen has expanded its web measurement panel to be eight times larger then it had been, allowing for a larger sample size of sites and behavior and hopefully resulting in more accurate results.

Stephen Baker at BusinessWeek takes a look at the evolving world of behavioral targeting in advertising and marketing.

Despite the availability and growing acceptance of other forms of metrics, a Forrester report says most online marketers are still dependent on click-through rates to determine success.

Media

PaidContent rounds-up some of the thinking that’s been published about what to do with BusinessWeek in the wake of news the title’s publisher was looking to put it up for sale.

The editor of The Financial Times made comments expressing his belief that within a year most media organizations will be charging for content. He admits he’s unsure how the payment models will work from either the publisher or the reader standpoint but sees it as something that’s inevitable.

One initiative that’s leading that charge is Journalism Online, a company begun by media personality Steven Brill, that wants to create a single platform for multiple pubs to setup pay walls of some form. That group says it is getting close to launch but hasn’t released an initial affiliate list yet not because of lack of interest but because new pubs are being added so fast the list is out-of-date as soon as it’s updated.

Social Media

Fox Interactive wants to turn MySpace into an entertainment portal, according to reports. I’m confused as I thought that’s what it already largely was. Mashable thought likewise until it saw numbers from Hitwise that said differently. There also seems to be some lack of mission clarity internally.

I’m having increasing problems with companies that only respond to customer complaints when they’re being voiced on social networks and blogs while they still outsource and minimize the importance of their phone or other systems. The story of “United Breaks Guitars” is what’s got me thinking about this again.

Finding an Audience: Distribution Notes for 7/17/09

Theatrical

A story in the LA Times asks whether the declining per-screen averages for 3D movies means that audiences are falling out of love with the novelty of the exhibition. I don’t think that’s the case – I think that it’s more indicative of the format becoming mainstreamed.

Hollywood is hoping things continue as they have so far and that this summer winds up being a record-setting year.

Home Video

The New York Times looks at movie-rental kiosk operator Redbox and how it plays to the very head of the long tail in terms of title availability. Scott Kirsner recounts his first experience trying out a rental from a Redbox unit and finds it interesting but probably not something that will be habit-forming.

Consumer spending on home entertainment was down four percent in the first half of 2009, totaling $9.73 billion. Spending on DVD and Blu-ray discs dropped six percent, with a 62 percent rise in Blu-ray renting and a 91 percent rise in buying offsetting a 14 percent fall in overall disc sales. Digital distribution was up 21 percent. As The Los Angeles Times notes, though, the DEG report plays up percentages – which range from favorable to not that bad – but doesn’t show actual dollar numbers, which would have been a lot more depressing.

Online/On-Demand

Blockbuster announced it will integrate its on-demand service into Samsung HDTVs, Blu-ray players and other devices beginning this fall.

Consumer spending on online video is expected to hit $3.9 billion this year, with a report from research firm Strategy Analytics saying there’s more willingness than some would believe within the public to pay for such online video.

VOD adoption among the general watching public continues to lag behind DVR and web-based viewing for a number of reasons, including the fact that there’s no one simple way to view VOD content. There’s also a lack of real “oomph” because there’s no single advertising model either.

Sony is enjoying the success of its Playstation Network, which has turned into a major VOD player for the delivery of movies, TV programming and more.

Picking up the Spare: Star Trek, The Hangover, Harry Potter, Bruno

Star Trek

IO9 uses a Variety story on how different films are marketed to different regions to look at the ways Star Trek was sold world-wide, appealing to different cultural queues in each market.

The Hangover

That same story in Variety includes an examination of how The Hangover was tailored for each region. Interesting since this is the sort of comedy I would expect would be pretty universal in its appeal.

Bruno

Among those just now realizing they were duped are a set of twins that run a small PR shop in Los Angeles that Bruno the character approaches in an effort to raise his profile. Let’s just say the scene does not reflect well on my profession.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Since we’re all about how social media impacts a movie’s word-of-mouth now it’s only fitting that Mashable looks at how Harry Potter is a social media blockbuster and Steven Zietchek examines what impact Twitter will have on the movie’s box-office.

Donna at Lip-Sticking covers the online component of the campaign pretty well, including a deep-dive into some things I only glanced over and an examination of the fan community efforts that I didn’t mention at all.

The lack of promotional partners for the Harry Potter movies is on purpose, as this WSJ story says Warner Bros. has intentionally shied away from such deals since they can “cheapen or overexpose the product” and with so many movies in the series the studio doesn’t want to do any damage along either of those lines.

Quick Takes: 7/17/09

Founder and executive creative director of interactive marketing agency Trigger Jason Yim gets profiled in the LA Times and talks about his company and some of the great work they’ve done over the last four years.

Box office success is translating to retail success for tie-in items, something the retailers and licensing partners were worrying wouldn’t come to pass in the current economic climate.

Anchor Bay Entertainment has promoted Gordon Prend to executive vice president of worldwide marketing, heading the marketing of both theatrical and home video releases.

Some good, solid tips on optimizing a movie’s website from the team at SceneClips.

The smell test

Hard to see how TechCrunch’s decision to publish corporate documents stolen from Twitter (not leaked – they didn’t come from an insider looking to spill the beans – they were stolen) passes any sort of ethical hurdle. Even if they don’t publish them they’ve seen them and that means all their “reporting” on Twitter or any of its competitors – which could include everyone from Yammer to Google – will be colored by the contents of those documents.

It’s pretty easy to see if this sort of thing is ethical. Would The New York Times publish corporate documents stolen from IBM? Of course not. These aren’t The Pentagon Papers – there’s no public good that’s being served by bringing secret dealings to light. But a favorite pasttime of the online pundits is to wonder how Twitter plans to make money and opine on its growth rate and speculate on who could potentially buy it. So TechCrunch got its hands on documents that shed light on some of those questions and, seeing nothing but pageviews in their eyes, they copied and pasted select portions of those documents.

TechCrunch might be legally in the clear (via Neville Hobson)- though I question even that – from a journalistic ethics point of view there’s absolutely no cover they can claim in this instance. Just bad all around.