Category Archives: digital media

July 11, 2013 · 11:03 am

Fewer PCs And Fewer Cords

I saw two articles in the last day that might not seem to have much to do with one another but in my mind point to the ongoing changes in the media world.

English: Desktop computer Français : ordinateu...

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The first is from the Gartner folks along with IDC and it’s their quarterly report on PC shipments. Not surprisingly, the numbers aren’t good.  They are reporting around an 11% decline in shipments which continues a downward trend from last quarter.  There are a number of reasons to which analysts attribute this trend but the one with which I agree the most is the thinking that we’re now consuming media mostly on tablets.  PC’s are something that are used for heavy lifting – video editing, lengthy writing, spreadsheets, etc.   Families aren’t buying multiple units for the home any more (at one point we had four PC’s here for school work, business, and leisure usage among the family).

The second piece has to do with cord-cutting and comes from the folks at eMarketer:

Research company GfK surveyed US households with TVs and found that in 2013, 19.3% of respondents had broadcast TV only and did not subscribe to any pay TV service. That’s a 37.9% increase from 2010 when only 14% of households shunned pay TV services and relied solely on broadcast TV…The study suggested that while wider online video viewing and more internet-connected TV options may have boosted cord-cutting, basic cost savings is at the real heart of the move toward broadcast-only TV. The study found that 60% of those who cancelled their pay TV service cited cost-cutting as the reason.

I disagree with the notion that it’s the cost alone.  I think it’s more the cost/value equation (the expense to get the programming live vs. the cost of other sources on a delay) coupled with the wider penetration of tablets as cited in the first piece.  The market favors tablets over low-end computers, content producers are doing a better job of populating that channel, even to the detriment of their traditional distributors, and the business model (selling ads against an audience that’s viewing simultaneously) has been seriously disrupted.

I’m watching to see who moves to accept the new world and who denies that things are moving.  It’s sort if a climate-change analogy in my mind.  You can deny it right up until the ice pack mets and floods you out or you can take preemptive measures and move to higher ground.  Which are you doing?

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July 8, 2013 · 11:04 am

Something For Nothing

Let’s start the week with a little bit of common sense backed up by some research.

Mobile-phone-advertising

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You might categorize the recent study released by Millward Brown, in partnership with SessionM, in the “duh” bin and you wouldn’t be far off but it serves as a good reminder of some basic marketing thoughts.  The study is called Exploring the Role of Value in Mobile Advertising and it talks about how to break through low favorability of mobile advertising by offering more tangible value in brands’ marketing content.  You can read the study here (pdf) if you want but mobile ads are close to the bottom of consumer‘s likes. Only 9% of people have a favorable attitude toward them (opt-in email tops the rankings at 28%, showing that mobile advertising in general has a problem).

Here is the “duh” part that carried over to just about anything you’re doing in marketing:

  • Consumers presently reward brands that deliver on that value in exchange for their loyalty
  • Reward-based mobile advertising succeeds when  the advertising execution is timely, chosen &  relevant and the reward is predictable, tangible & chosen.
  • Advertisers need to be mindful of the value exchange they offer through their mobile marketing efforts and make certain it is commensurate with their audience’s expectations.

In other words, answer the “why do I care” question and make sure your answer is coming from the consumer’s point of view.  Make sure that any time the consumer is spending on you is paid back many times over.  Look to surprise them and in a way that’s meaningful to them.  Be visible but unintrusive – show ads at natural break points (we all hate pop-ups that stop us from reading or video ads – TV or steaming – that interrupt our experience).  You have to give them something for their attention and engagement – you can’t get something (their loyalty) for nothing.

Where we fail as marketers is the place where our branding needs climb over those of our consumers or potential consumers.  We need to avoid that place like the plague, whether it’s on mobile devices or anyplace else.  This research shows it yet again but one would hope that common sense – and the ability to approach marketing as a consumer and not a brand maven – has us there already.  Does it?

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July 3, 2013 · 1:48 pm

Reaping What You Sow

A heavy topic for midweek, kids, but today it’s karma or, in less religious terms, what goes around comes around (such a child of the 60’s, I know).  What has me on this topic are a couple of things that came out during the last week and I want to bring them to your attention.  Both have some strong implications to anyone who uses the web (and obviously, since you’re reading this, you’re included).  In a sense, there’s a third thing – the whole PRISM program from the NSA – but since we don’t do politics, and that program can’t really be discussed without politics entering the discussion, I’m going to table it.  I will say, however, that if you’re angry about it now, where were you a dozen years ago when it all began?

That’s sort of the point I want to make about the other two topics.  The first are the “shadow” profiles Facebook has been gathering.  It came out that a bug on Facebook exposed user data for 6 million folks.  Moreover, the data it exposed proved that Facebook has been putting together profiles of everyone, even people not on Facebook, and the information contained in those dossiers has not been offered up to Facebook – they just found it.  The company that exposed it – Packet Storm – asked:

would Facebook ever commit to automatically discarding information of individuals that do not have a known Facebook account? Possibly age it out X days if they don’t respond to an invite due to a friend uploading their information without their knowledge?

Their response was essentially that they think of contacts imported by a user as the user’s data and they are allowed to do with it what they want. To clarify, it’s not your data, it’s your friends. We went on to ask them if Facebook would commit to having a privacy setting that dictates Facebook will automatically delete any and all data uploaded about me via third parties (“friends”) if it’s not in scope with what I’ve shared on my profile (and by proxy, is out-of-band from my privacy settings)?

We were basically met with the same reasoning as above and in their wording they actually went as far as claiming that it would be a freedom of speech violation.

Let’s repeat that:  it’s not your data.  The solution proposed?  Governmental intervention.  Frankly, I prefer the solution contained in the other topic of the day – the Cookie Clearinghouse being developed by the folks at Stanford.  I encourage you to click through here to see how it works.  It won’t solve the “bad actor” situation that we see in the Facebook example but since it’s designed  to enable browser developers to block third-party cookies — such as those set by ad networks — without also inadvertently blocking cookies from companies that have relationships with consumers, it’s a start.  The ad networks and others are not happy about any blocking and are doing their damnedest to stop it, but I think it’s pretty obvious that privacy is(finally) front and center for even casual users.

Sorry for the length today but the point is simple:  we reap what we sow.  If we’re bad actors when it comes to invading people’s privacy, the odds are that some legislated solution will arrive on your doorstep and it won’t be as simple as just doing the right thing you should have done in the first place.  Witness COPPA and CanSpam, brought about because the bad stuff came back around to haunt not only the perpetrators, but the legitimate companies that tried to behave as if it were their own data and their family’s data being taken.

Are you aware of this?  What do you think?

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