August 1, 2008

A view along the Yellowstone River (where I was last week)

Advertising, conversations and cross purposes meet in the showing of a Google ad on Columbia Records site. Hypebot, the blog for new music business, ran an ad with the headline "Major Labels Are Obsolete" on the main site. For less than a latte ($3.17 to be precise) 6,417 people saw the ad; there were also 55 diggs, 20+ comments and 265+ sites that linked to this post. The influence and reach of the Internet is fascinating. Maybe it is reasons like this that major properties are dropping from ad networks to control both the content and the money. A thanx to Scott Curtis for sharing this one.
Be prepared to provide the ad servers with your own data when doing direct/interactive programs. The big four (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo! and AOL) and major networks are opening up to allow marketers to feed ads and the data used for targetting. Trafficking ads just got a whole lot more interesting and intense.
Customer service meets social media. According to SNCR research - over half of the respondents used social media to "vent" about an experience and ratings/forums rand up there with 'search engines' as important sources of
Local online ad revenue is going to the newspaper sites (27%) followed by television sites (10%), local Yellow Pages (10%) and radio stations (2%) according to Borrell Associate research.
Focused on life stage and youth? Here's five rules for Consumer 2.0 from mr.youth and RepNation.
- Authenticity trumps celebrity
- Niche is the new form
- Bite-size communications dominate
- Personal utility drives adoption
- Consumers own brands
Quote: "Passion is the new competitive edge." Max Kalehoff goes on "When passion lets loose, you drive focus, cultivate mastery, leverage spontaneity, foster creativity, build intuition and live toward mission. The dots connect. Clarity emerges. Your own bar of excellence sets higher, and you become infatuated with exceeding it." Where should it be applied? Some of the areas ...
- Innovating based on your market insight and intuition.
- Building your product with quality and speed.
- Ensuring the highest aesthetic and usability.
- Paying attention to all the details and signals that comprise the experience.
- Inspiring your employees, customers, investors and other stakeholders.
- Engaging and collaborating with customers.
- Fixing things quickly when they go wrong -- and then making them far better.
For fun, here are the logos for the metros of the world; how many have you ridden? Found here.