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

The Untapped Profit Opportunity For Ecommerce Sites

The first 15 years of online retail saw breakneck growth and little reason to focus on anything but transactional revenue. As the medium matures, the smartest retailers will recognize they are sitting on a gold mine of media impressions and consumer behaviors that can keep the bottom line growing even as transactional growth slows.  Retail Web sites boast one of the best audiences a marketer could ask for: people who are actively researching and shopping products, practically raising their hands that they are currently in-market. In fact, brick-and-mortar stores have recognized this value for years, selling their suppliers premium placement such as end-cap displays, eye-level shelf space, and store circular ads.  Yet most online retailers are barely scratching the surface of the potential. The untapped media sales opportunity in online retail becomes even clearer when you look at conversion rates. Typically less than 5% of a Web site’s shoppers actually transact — but 100% of that traffic is valuable to advertisers since many of those shoppers will go on to buy elsewhere.  So why haven’t online retailers stepped up their game for in-store advertising?

Read More: MediaPost

YuMe Adds Brand Security

Online video has the undisputed numbers to attract advertisers, now it needs to inspire the confidence to seal the deal. To that end, video advertising technology company YuMe today announced that it has added brand security capabilities to its ACE technology platform.  The new capabilities leverage YuMe’s proprietary domain detection technology, which can collect detailed information about the in-page environment of a syndicated or embeddable player when it makes an ad request, even when the player is not associated with a companion banner.  This allows YuMe to prevent ads from running in video players that have been embedded on inappropriate websites, and to work with publishers to constantly monitor and improve the list of sites where their syndicated and user-embeddable players are appearing.  “The majority of online video publishers—including some of the biggest media companies in the world—have chosen to syndicate their premium online video content and to offer user-embeddable video players, and we want to be able to reach these online video audiences while keeping our customers’ brands safe” said Jonathan Nelson, CEO of Omnicom Digital.  “We are pleased that YuMe has chosen to make an ongoing investment in brand security, combining regular monitoring and research with proactive technology to prevent inappropriate impressions before they happen.”

Read More: DigidayDaily

IPG and AOL Unveil Plan to Improve Retail Marketing

Madison Avenue officially kicks off one of its annual summer rites today – in the South of France – where agencies will compete to prove who is most innovative and creative during the 57th annual Cannes Lions advertising festival. Some of the competition will take place during the judging sessions, of which one judging insider tells OMD U.S. agencies have made the most number of entries to the “short list,” followed by Sweden. Some of the competition will take place in presentations and panel discussions. And some of the competition will take place in the obligatory press announcements that agencies use to score bragging rights amid all the industry attention. Interpublic’s Mediabrands was first to score on the latter front, announcing an innovative online retail marketing initiative with AOL.  The deal, which the companies boasted would “re-invent digital retail advertising,” combines the research and development assets of Interpublic units with the ability of AOL to mobilize and activate its massive online user base.  The end goal is to develop new technologies that benefit both online consumers and marketers in the retail marketing process.

 Read More: MediaPost

Vivaki CEO Talks With AdExchanger

AdExchanger.com: What announcement do you have in regards to inventory partners?

CH: We’re the first holding company to be procuring inventory through AdECN. We were able to make that integration happen via Invite Media.  I was with Microsoft’s Darren Huston last week and he is quite pleased with the quality of advertisers he’s seen come through due to the integration and [the quality] of our brand marketers. We’re excited by that. It’s by no means exclusive and wouldn’t expect it to be. But, it now makes us interoperable with Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. And we’re working hard on AOL which will hopefully happen in the near term.

AdExchanger.com:  What kind of inventory do you see through AdECN?

CH: AdECN is focused first on Hotmail. And I think as they understand how performance looks, we’ll expand from there. But, we’ve started with Hotmail.  The other good piece of news about this is the fact that it is through Invite Media, and post‑Google acquisition – [Google] has been very supportive.  Google realizes it’s for the DFA stack, away from media, and they appreciate that it works just like search bid management or serving ads. it’s a good thing for the industry that they’re taking the interoperable view.  You were asking [earlier] how we felt about the Invite Media acquisition. I think it’s great that what you’re seeing is some consistency where Omnicom (Click here for OMG CEO Matt Spiegel’s thoughts) and InterPublic Group (Click here for Cadreon CEO Brendan Moorcroft’s thoughts) – I believe through AdExchanger.com – they both have come out supportive and positive.

Read More: AdExchanger

Five Ways Foursquare Advertising is Getting Less Interesting

Foursquare, the geolocation social tool, has been a media darling as of late. Not only is it growing, but people innately understand the monetization model, which is not something you can say about every social site and tool. As people “check in,” or report where they are to their network, Foursquare serves them offers from nearby businesses. It’s a win-win-win situation: Businesses can market to people who are able to immediately take action; Foursquare earns revenue; and users get valuable offers they can use.  But Starbucks’ current program on Foursquare may kill the goose that lays the golden eggs (or at least demonstrate how that goose may die a slow, lingering death of neglect). I believe (and I’m curious if you agree) that Starbucks’ ubiquity combined with the offer’s difficult redemption is decreasing attention for Foursquare’s other offers. If other large chains follow suit with similar promotions, those “Special Nearby” tabs within Foursquare’s mobile apps won’t get as much notice, and that means problems for advertisers on the Foursquare platform.  If you’re a Foursquare user, you’ve undoubtedly seen Foursquare offers, but for those who are not yet acquainted with the joys of mayorships, here is how it works: When you check in at a location, Foursquare will alert you when an offer is available in close proximity. With a click, you can view that offer. The first couple of times I saw this, the offers were interesting and immediately relevant. For example, I checked in at SFMOMA and was alerted I could get free entry to an art museum across the street.

Read More: MediaPost

The Global CMO Interview: Lorraine Twohill, Google

Google is not known for its marketing; the product markets itself. But as Google attempts to translate its one mega-success — search advertising — into other lines of business, marketing is becoming a more important part of what the search giant is all about.  Lorraine Twohill heads marketing for Google on a global basis as VP-global marketing, which means a lot more than most people think. It encompasses everything from TV and billboard ads in Japan — one market that Google doesn’t dominate — to videos for products such as Chrome or Docs and Google’s first TV ad, a Super Bowl spot called “Parisian Love.”  Google’s marketing takes different shapes all over the globe and must be relevant to countries with high broadband penetration rates, such as the U.S. or Korea, as well as places where people predominantly access the web using mobile phones or in internet cafés. It has no agency of record, but rather works with several agencies, including Wieden & Kennedy Japan and Bartle Bogle Hegarty in the U.S. and Europe.  Ms. Twohill joined Google from European travel site Opodo seven years ago, and assumed the global marketing role two years ago. She currently manages marketing teams in more than 30 countries.

Read More: AdAge