Facebook Is to the Power Company as …
It was a typically vexing week for Facebook. On the one hand, the social-networking service signed up its 500 millionth active user. On the other hand, it was found to be one of the least popular private-sector companies in the United States by the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Apparently, Americans were more satisfied filing their taxes online than they were posting updates on their Facebook page. It is a continuing contradiction: Facebook is widely criticized for shifting its terms of service and for disclosing private information — and yet millions of people start accounts each month. Analysts always grasp for analogies to explain Facebook’s tortured relationship with its users. Facebook has been called the sterile suburbs to the gritty urban Internet; it is a “walled garden” in the organic messiness of the Web; it is Russia under Vladimir Putin; it is (and this one stings in tech circles) today’s AOL. But perhaps the most telling metaphor compares Facebook to the other companies lurking at the bottom of the American Customer Satisfaction Index: cable companies, wireless telephone service providers. Utilities. Here are services everyone uses, no matter how much people dislike the companies that provide them. Danah Boyd, a social media researcher at Microsoft and a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, argues that Facebook fits that mold. On her blog in May, she posted: “I hate all of the utilities of my life. Venomous hatred. And because they’re monopolies, they feel no need to make me appreciate them. Cuz they know that I’m not going to give up water, power, sewage, or the Internet out of spite. Nor will most people give up Facebook, regardless of how much they grow to hate them.”
Read More: NYTimes.com
An Ad Model Poised For A Comeback
It’s challenging for media buyers to differentiate among ad networks. From the network side, it’s difficult to develop a product positioning that is truly ownable within the space. In an era where anyone can start an ad network, virtually overnight, any networks getting traction with ad buyers quickly find themselves swimming in a sea of “me too” imitators. On the publisher’s side of the equation, it’s even more difficult to tell which networks to use. It’s one of the primary challenges of the chief revenue officer to balance direct sales forces, ad networks, exchanges, and new ad platforms in such a way as to deliver a maximum return from month to month on a site’s pool of available ad inventory. There’s a check that comes in from each network partner each month. From a CPM standpoint, the price paid is abysmally low when compared to deals struck by the publisher’s direct sales force. But it’s a check nonetheless, and most publishers choose to get a check for the incremental sales, rather than rely completely on direct sales channels and risk lower overall returns. Simply put, two ad revenue streams are better than one, even if one undercuts the pricing of the other one, and publishers are unsure what’s being done with data collected from network and exchange campaigns. Even though many would see it as short-sighted, short-term revenue, pressure usually makes the publisher take the check rather than cut the channel to support the direct sales channel.
Read More: iMediaConnection
Closing the Tech Divide
If there was a single familiar refrain from digital shops over the past decade, it was that their older, traditional-agency brethren “didn’t get it” when it came to digital. But lately, that widely acknowledged gap has begun to narrow to the point where “older” agencies can claim more success in some areas of digital marketing. Take the recent Old Spice “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” digital campaign, an effort that is already a textbook example of how an advertiser can make itself a vital part of digital culture. The campaign didn’t come from any of the digital-agency stalwarts like R/GA, AKQA or Razorfish. Instead, it came from Wieden + Kennedy, a shop not long ago often labeled as wedded to TV and print. The Old Spice success followed a strong showing for non-digital specialists in this year’s awards shows. At Cannes, for example, top honors in the Cyber category went to Wieden for Nike Livestrong’s “Chalkbot” and DDB Sweden for Volkswagen’s “Fun Theory.” The Cyber Agency of the Year Award went to Crispin Porter + Bogusky.
Read More: AdWeek
