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Enter the IAB Seal of Approval

posted on April 5, 2011

After many months of talk about a set of self-policing rules for digital marketers, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has finally launched their Ad Network & Exchange Quality Assurance Certification program.

The new IAB guidelines is a 35-page document that covers such topics as Acquiring Inventory, an Online Media Rating System, Data Disclosure and methods of handling customer complaints. Ad networks who agree to follow a published set of guidelines will receive what they refer to as “the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for digital marketing.”

For those of you born in the later half of the century, the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval was awarded to products that were tested and approved by the popular homemaking magazine. It started in the early 1900′s and was a highly recognized symbol of trust through the 40′s, 50′s and 60′s. If a product had that seal, then the consumer knew it was safe, reliable and a good buy.

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Netflix, WebMD Make the List of Most Successful Digital Media Companies

posted on April 4, 2011

paidContent has put together a list of what they think are the Top 50 Most Successful Digital Media Companies in the US. They based their decisions on which companies were bringing in the most money from online content and online advertising (estimated at times) and on the company’s strategy and future.

Not surprisingly Google, Yahoo, Apple and Microsoft took the top four places in that order. Fifth place went to Netflix with their estimated revenue of $1.5 billion-plus. Netflix recently lined up some big deals with the studios and now that they’re doing well with their streaming arm, the future looks very bright for this ground-breaker that is slowly clearing the field of all competition.

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Internet Ad Spending Not Equal to Internet Usage

posted on April 1, 2011

Internet ad spending is on the rise, but according to those statistical geniuses at eMarketer, the rise isn’t equal to the rise in actual internet usage.

What they did was look at the amount of time the average adult spends watching TV, reading the paper, surfing on the internet, etc. Then they matched those percentages to the percentage of the overall ad spending dollars by category.

Here’s what they got.

As you can see, people spend most of their media time watching television. By a strange coincidence, the percentage of ad dollars spent on TV is nearly identical. Pretty neat. But after that, things get funky.

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Hotmail Gets Interactive

posted on March 29, 2011

Did you know that Hotmail is the second most used web-mail client, beating Gmail by over 94%? Gotta wonder how many of those accounts are throw aways for junk mail, but I digress before I even get started.

Microsoft is looking to strengthen its bid to make Hotmail the leading web-mail client by making it more interactive.

Right now, email is either text or HTML based which means your only real option for hooking people up is to include a link in your email. Microsoft wants to take that link and deliver that information right inside the email blank.

Imagine getting that YouTube video of a cat eating spaghetti right in your email client. No need to click! Even better, is the ability to add real time information in an email such as this example from Netflix.

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CBS Says Age and Sex Don’t Matter

posted on March 25, 2011

TV network CBS is taking a stance about sexism and ageism, but it has nothing to do with their hiring practices, it has to do with viewer demographics. CBS is working with Nielsen to devise a new way for categorizing viewers, one that is based on viewer behavior instead of their vital stats.

AdAge got the scoop from CBS Corp. Chief Research Officer David Poltrack, who talked about the idea at the Advertising Research Foundation’s Re:Think 2011 conference.

Poltrack says that small test studies conducted by Nielsen and Nielsen Catalina have proved what he’s always known, which is that “There is no link, none, between the age of the specified demographic delivery of the campaign and the sales generated by that campaign.”

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Kantar Media Reports 6.5 Percent Growth in 2010 Ad Economy

posted on March 17, 2011

 

Kantar Media calls it the “feel good headline” and it’s likely that everyone but the newspapers would agree. According to their new report, ad expenditures across the board rose 6.5% in 2010 for a total of $131.1 billion. The downside is that not everyone benefited from the growth.

Have a look at the chart:

Kantar says that political advertising and a fresh push by the car companies helped lift TV advertising. Auto ads alone, rose 19.8% over last year while Direct Response and Pharma both dropped by 5 to 8%.

Running a close second in growth is Internet Display advertising which rose 9.9%. A bit surprisingly, Outdoor was right there with 9.6% growth.

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QR Codes: Bridging the Gap Between Offline and Online

posted on March 15, 2011

In a recent article called “Why QR Codes Will Go Mainstream,” Mashable referred to these quizzical little boxes as “the shortest distance between curiosity and information retrieval.” Very poetic.

The author of the piece suggests that QR codes are likely to become the commonplace connector between all things offline and online. He points out the fact that the code is open-source and freely available for use, that adding it to a magazine page doesn’t cost extra and that the rise in smartphone usage makes them accessible to more people every day.

All of this is true, but there’s one big downside to QR codes that I think will keep them from becoming mainstream; they don’t mean anything when you look at them. They’re cool and for folks who love puzzles, they’re enticing, but for the average person flipping through a magazine, they’re an out of focus eye chart.