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Engage the right side of your brain by exploring the creative work that drives audiences to listen, learn, engage and click. The DoubleClick Rich Media gallery features dozens of cool creatives from the world’s leading agencies and advertisers.
Which Way?
He says, “Young companies receive a much stronger return on investment by improving their organic rankings on search engines than pay-per-click advertising. But that’s not the end of the story. Companies win only when increased site traffic converts into paying customers.”
He also recommends:
By: Douglas MacMillan
It’s tempting to compartmentalize social networking sites by the demographic groups most closely associated with them: MySpace is a party for teenagers, Facebook is for a hangout for college students, and LinkedIn is a conference for working professionals. But a steady influx of adult Internet users to all of these sites is altering their makeup at a surprising rate, according to a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
The research group found that some 35% of online adults now have at least one profile on a social networking site, more than quadruple the amount that did in February 2005, when the figure was 8%. Compared with teenagers – who flocked to these sites early on but then slowed down in adoption – the number of grown-ups jumping on the social media bandwagon has roughly doubled every 18 months over the past four years.
Online advertisers, are you listening? Sites like MySpace, found to be used by half of social networking adults, are now a viable place to pitch mature consumers with discretionary income – many of whom are not obsessed with Justin Timberlake or Twilight. Yet kiddy-geared ads continue to dominate the site.
“As you start to see more adults in social networking, I think [marketers] will have to respond,” says Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst with eMarketer. They want to be where their customers are. Williamson does allow that young people are currently much more engaged with these sites, while many older adults tend to join them “as a novelty,” to connect with old friends, and check back irregularly. But over the next couple years, she expects adults to spend more time on social networks.
Another surprising finding in Pew’s study is the prevalence of minority groups on social sites. The portion of African-American adults with an online social profile (48%) as well as non-white Hispanics (43%) both eclipse the portion of white adults on the site, just 31%. As Pew senior research specialist Amanda Lenhart points out, that’s mainly due to the fact that 18-24 year-olds, by the far the most socially wired group in the study, are more diverse in makeup – because of higher birthrates among minority groups, immigration, and other factors. Still, “those numbers are a reality,” she says.
With many brands ramping up efforts to court minority groups online, social networks appear to be a good place to start. I spoke with Marla Skiko, who heads up digital innovation at global ad agency Starcom Mediavest Group’s multicultural unit, Tapestry, and she said she’s noticed a “huge uptick” in the number of consumers her campaigns target using online social networks – particularly Latinos. “We are bringing more ideas in the social environment to our clients, and we hope that those platforms continue to refine their ability to target our consumer,” she says. MySpace Latino, a site launched by New Corp. last Spring, has already proved to be a valuable tool for reaching Hispanics online.
The audience is there, the verdict is out: Is social media a viable channel for online ads? If anything, these numbers give Web sites like Facebook, which have struggled to refine a business model, more time to find out. “If you saw usage rates stagnating, it would start to look like a fad,” says eMarketer’s Williamson. “As long as more people use social networks, the more time they have to develop that model.”
National Park Service
All across the country, park rangers are turning into podcasters. Hundreds of brief audio and video programs are up on park websites and on iTunes giving visitors a new national park experience. People can learn about park resources, take a guided tour, get help planning trips, and, best of all, meet actual rangers.
“While nothing can replace a personal experience in a national park, we think our podcasts will enhance people’s trips or give them the opportunity to learn about a park that they can’t visit,” said Mary A. Bomar, Director of the National Park Service. “Whether people download them to portable devices or watch them on their computers, these free electronic presentations give us another way to serve park enthusiasts of all ages.
Sample Audio Tour of The Everglades
Learn About Parks Many parks offer interpretive podcasts about wildlife, history, and topical issues like climate change and fire management. The most extensive collection of park podcasts is from Yellowstone National Park where they are reaching out to new and nontraditional audiences to spark an interest in visiting the park. The Inside Yellowstone series has more than 50 episodes, which are one to two minutes in length. More episodes are on the way.
“Our podcasts give people from every corner of the earth the chance to fall in love with Yellowstone and become its stewards for the future,” said George Heinz, one of the writers and on-screen personalities for the podcast series. The park has another online series called Yellowstone InDepth that presents mini-documentaries on subjects like volcanoes, invasive species, bears, and wolves.
Yosemite National Park launched a new monthly podcast called Yosemite Nature Notes. A printed publication of the same name began in the 1920s and existed for five decades. “Just like the earlier version of Nature Notes, our podcasts tell Yosemite’s stories from the perspective of the people who work here,” said Steve Bumgardner, videographer and producer at Yosemite National Park. “I like the idea that we’ve brought this institution back to life and that we use new media to put a personal face on the National Park Service.”
“My favorite podcast about Canyonlands National Park is the one on potholes,” said Carter, an 8-year-old visitor who watched all of the park’s podcasts before his trip. “It was so interesting to learn that tiny creatures are living in a bunch of dirt.” Carter’s sister Brooke, 11, appreciated knowing how to recognize cryptobiotic soils so she didn’t walk on the delicate crust. Their mother, Tiffani, thought the podcasts empowered her kids and said, “they loved being the experts and teaching us (their parents) what they learned while we walked around the park.”
Take a Guided Tour In addition to general information, podcasts are a great way to offer ranger-led tours of specific areas that people can enjoy on their own schedule. More and more people download guided tours onto their iPods or mp3 players prior to their national park trip. When they arrive, they literally have a ranger in the palm of their hand to guide them on a walking or driving tour.
At Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, people stop at overlooks along the South Rim Road and watch podcasts about geology, history, life, and recreation at those exact spots. Everglades National Park also has a car tour (audio only) that leads listeners on a guided exploration down the main park road. Four civil war battlefields – Gettysburg, Antietam, Petersburg, and Richmond – offer podcasts that allow you to walk or drive along as you listen to an NPS historian talk about decisive and dramatic battles.
Urban parks use podcast tours to reach local residents who may not know much about the parks they pass every day. For example, residents in Minneapolis and St. Paul can listen to information about Mississippi National River and Recreation Area while walking a four-mile loop near the river. Residents of Washington D.C. can download walking tours for Rock Creek Park and people in St. Louis can do the same for Jefferson National Expansion Memorial.
Plan a Trip Visitors already use the internet to research park trips, but now podcasts make it more personal. “It’s a blast when visitors hear my voice and recognize me from the podcast,” said Elysha Iversen, Wilderness Visitor Use Assistant at Grand Canyon National Park. “It tells me that we actually reach people and help them plan their hikes before they get here.” Iversen and others record podcasts with important safety information about trail conditions. The park also offers hiking and river running orientation videos as podcasts and will soon, launch new podcasts about Leave No Trace to help people reduce their recreational impacts.
Glacier National Park offers videos online about hiking, and rangers say the programs speed up the backcountry permit process. “Rather than having to watch the video at the permit station which is required, more and more visitors have watched it online ahead of time,” said Bill Hayden, Interpretive Specialist.
Other parks help people plan trips with podcasts, too. Visitors can learn about recreational activities at Curecanti National Recreation Area, like fishing, hiking, and camping. Katmai National Park and Preserve has an audio podcast weaving together music, stories, and tips for reaching that remote wilderness area.
Take a Virtual Tour While not available for download like podcasts, virtual tours give people a park experience right on their home computer. For example, Clara Barton National Historic Site offers a virtual tour of Barton’s home, a building that served as the national headquarters for the American Red Cross. The tour allows visitors to navigate through all three levels of the house and gives access to images, text, and audio clips.
Acadia National Park has an eCruise along the rocky shores of Mount Desert Island and Glacier National Park offers eHikes that take visitors through stunning wilderness areas among glaciers, wildflowers, and bears. The experiences really have visitors buzzing. One man wrote, “I am a fighter pilot in Iraq…and it makes my day when I can take a hike in Glacier even if it’s from behind my computer.” A teacher from Michigan said, “the virtual hikes are awesome for a classroom project I am doing with my 5th graders.” And, another visitor remarked, “they are perhaps the next best thing to actually being there.”
New virtual tours are coming soon: Zion National Park will release an eHike for Angel’s Landing; Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks will launch eHikes that go through the Sierra Nevada foothills or among the giant sequoias; and the Statue of Liberty will provide an eTour covering Liberty Island, the inside of Lady Liberty, and a 360-degree view from her crown.
Some worry that creating podcasts and virtual tours about national parks may keep people, especially children, disconnected from the actual places. “Personally, I don’t think that people are going to give up on the real thing,” said Todd Edgar, Media Specialist at Acadia National Park. “After learning about parks from our online resources, people want to get outside and explore on their own.”
For many other national park podcasts and virtual tours, go to www.nps.gov. If a park unit offers online programs, you will find them by clicking on “Photos and Multimedia” in the left navigation bar of their homepage.
Matthew
Dan Mason, president and CEO of CBS Radio, and his crew rolled into San Francisco this week to talk about radio in the digital age. Mason told the crowd of mainly media buyers, radio personalities and sales executives that radio is still very much relevant in this new digital age. Mason also pointed out that the prediction of the demise of radio has a long history dating pack to the advent of the launch of TV. More recent forecasters have continued on with this theme, saying that 8-track tapes, cassettes, CD’s, satellite radio and iPod’s would kill radio. However, in this round of innovation, it seems that CBS plans on embracing the change as demonstrated in its launch of the new play.it media player. The objective seems to be to target the 9-5 at work listening audience, who may not be able to receive a radio signal or bring a radio into their work space.
The player which will be marketed jointly with AOL seems to be ahead of the pack in web based media players. Now listeners will be able to listen to radio stations from around the country from a single radio station’s website. So if you are a music fan and you enjoy listening to Alice Radio in San Francisco, and you hear news of Elliott Sptizer, you can click over to CBS’s NYC news station, WCBS to get the low down.
But this is only one interesting feature of the player, which soon will have a Pandora-like feel to it. Listeners will be able to create their own radio station by typing in an artist and getting suggestions of other similar artists. The listener will then be able to easily rank the artists by dragging them closer to the start of the play list. If for instance, you are a big Springsteen fan, but hate the Eagles — you can ban the Eagles from ever playing on your station.
There are multiple benefits to advertisers with this new platform, as banner ads can now be contextually placed in the media player and synced with the content of the audio feed. For instance, if a music station is promoting a concert, a graphic could appear on the player during the ad or even when the talent talks about the concert.
I asked Mason about allowing advertiser generated content to be integrated in the player, and he said it’s open for discussion. I wondered if I could place some of the financial programs that I syndicate into the player, so a listener could create their own business talk radio station. All I can report right now is, stay tuned…
Matthew
Web 2.0 and the Social Web are really about relationships. So to ID whether a new technology will stick around or fizzle away, ask these questions:
1. Does it enable new ways of connecting people?
2. Is it easy to signup?
3. Does it move power from the establishment to the people?
4. Can the community that uses it create enough content to feed itself?
5. Is the platform open source or open to partnerships?
If it fosters a new way to create new relationships in a new way, it will most likely thrive within the social web.
Jonathan
Sample Audio Converted to Video for YouTube
Google this weeked added visitor demographic information to its analytics tool on YouTube. This new feature will allow for a combined total view of all the videos uploaded by a person or organization. The feature breaks down viewership by age group, gender, or a combination of the two. The information is based on what users provide Google when they set up a YouTube account.
This first version charts video views on an interactive time line and map, allowing users to drill down into different geographic regions and see the viewing activity in those regions over selected time periods. It also allows users to compare the relative popularity of their videos in a given region to all other videos in that region.
The past week I spent at the Web 2.0 Expo. It was interesting to hear the various perspectives on SEO, SMO, new tools to use for the social web, and the new startups being launched. But by far the most compelling talk I heard was held by O’Reilly at the end of the show.
Through this talk the two founders of O’Reilly’s consulting division spoke about their experiences consulting for enterprise-size, traditional corporations and how these corporations are loosing market share rapidly as a result of the social web. They presented the “seven deadly sins” of social media including not wanting to be engaged in two-way dialogue with their costumers, not wanting to include their “lead costumers” in the beta-testing and product feedback, among others.
By far the most profound point was (and I’m paraphasing): We could give you all a web 2.0 strategy to take back to your company, but the fact is that if a there is not a critical mass of employees within your company that are on-board with this new philosophy – its not going to work.
This is pretty amazing – that essentially the current corporate culture itself, within the company, is the cause of its own downturn. And that this is the only way to remedy the situation.
A perfect example of this is the Comcast video shot by a customer. A Comcast tech arrived to service an account at someone’s residence and fell asleep on the couch after waiting an hour on hold with homebase. Here’s the video:
To combat the bad press – Comcast spent $x Millions in a new “speedy, reliable service” advertising campaign.
