Influential Interactive Marketing

FutureMe.org

It's late and I'm doing some last run throughs for a client presentation tomorrow morning and can't keep my mind from wandering a bit.  I was thinking about the future and how some of our conclusions to be presented tomorrow as part of a discussion of "new media" might seem archaic if I were to revisit them a year or even several months down the road.  The past often seems odd in light of the future ... but I wonder if looking back, I would ever be able to recall the thoughts or inspirations I had tonight in coming up with what seems (at least to these tired eyes) to be a well thought out piece of intellect sure to illustrate just how smart we really are about this blog stuff.

I came across a post today on the Daily Innovator blog about a site called FutureMe.org which might help.  The site offers the ability to write yourself (or someone else) an email to be delivered in the future.  Of course, scheduling content to go live or emails to be sent at set time is nothing new.  But here's the premise behind the site:

two fellas started this so that you could write yourself a letter to be delivered at a later date. we've all had to do them in high school and college. it's sorta cool to receive a letter from yourself about where you thought you'd be a year (two years? more?) later. FutureMe.org is based on the principle that memories are less accurate than emails. we strive for accuracy.

I have always loved the idea of a time capsule (as I hear the collective groan from my teammates who consider it - rightly - to be a totally cliche idea because of its overuse as a PR stunt).  Just the idea of sealing a message or a thought up for some period of time and waiting until some point in the future to dust it off, open the "cork" and taste the past ... it's exciting.  I'm going to write one to my 2010 self about today.  Not about blogs, but about my 1 year old son who pointed at my shoes this morning, looked up at me and proudly declared his first word (sort of) -- "yeesh?"  Yup, some moments are worth remembering.

The Storyteller Instinct at We Media

Attending the We Media conference last week, one key theme began to emerge for me from the many insightful panels  -- that the "storyteller instinct" is the driving force behind much of the change happening in the media industry today.  Consumer generated media, in large part, is driven by individuals' need to tell their stories.  For a long time now (for better or worse) reporting has been more about telling a story than about reporting on fact.  Good marketers and salespeople tell stories that consumers want to believe. 

The instinct itself is not new - storytelling as a form of keeping history has been a key part of many native cultures across the world.  But as the We Media event showed, the difference today comes from the diversity of voices that are now able to add their stories into the previously closed world view of "mainstream media"  (the Global Voices blog remains my favourite example of this).  As people continue to read blogs, use RSS feed aggregators and selectively seek out new stories and new forms of media - the dangers for mainstream media to grow obsolete are ever present. 

The even greater danger many panelists in the conference from the media side noted, however, was the rise of the "comfortable cocoon" (as termed by Andrew Heyward of CBS News) - where people only consume a narrow band of information and never expand their world view.  This is the phenomenon which may present the greatest challenge to the media industry in the coming years.  Given the breadth of content and rise in technologies which allow us to filter our media choices - what we may really be facing is the death of debate.  The challenge for the media industry in the coming years will be to keep the collaborations and conversations happening.      

Collective Voice and Blogs

The theory of an encyclopedia built through the collective contribution of thousands of laypersons seems to defy logic. After all, how can you rely on individuals to work together with relatively few rules in order to develop a common encyclopaedic view of the world?  But despite the obvious problems, Wikipedia works - an online measure of proof for James Surowiecki's theory presented in his book, The Wisdom of Crowds. In it, he explores how a group of individuals can often emerge with thinking smarter and more reasoned than even the most intelligent individuals within the group.

Exploring this idea online, there are many trends that echo of the wisdom of crowds. Geotagging the Earth, online reviews and ratings of products, online speech translation -- all are examples where the collective approach is leading to advances far greater than possible from any individual. Peer to peer networks promise the ability for users to participate in a supercomputer networked model where the collective computing power could be used to analyze complex and vast amounts of data, such as that received through satellites and NASA space probes. In each case, the Internet represents a way for many unique voices to unify themselves into a meaningful result for all.

So, what of the bloggers? Those oddly independent individuals who post about everything, nothing or anything - of which I count myself a part. What is the emerging wisdom from our crowd?  While the answer may not yet be clear, services such as Technorati new blog directory and method for tagging blogs, and Google's new blogsearch are working to help answer these questions.  As time goes on, one can only hope that the collective voice will emerge like a Euro ... uniform enough to use a single currency, but diverse enough to contain each of our cultural heritage on the back of each note.

BridgeBlogging for Social Awareness

The launch and initial success of Current TV is just one of the many new manifestations of this idea of citizen journalists who are augmenting, and some would argue, overtaking traditional media in terms of credibility in reporting real life as it happens.  Aside from empowering individuals and growing from its small and dedicated audience base, the network also symbolizes the potential power of consumer generated media to affect social change through accomplishing the first hurdle in this process: raising awareness.  Indeed, raising awareness is something that has become a forte for the web and for blogs in particular.  Through the intersection of search, email, cross linking, personalization and the trackback nature of blogs, ideas can spread from individuals to hundreds of thousands of others.  None of this is new - however an interesting emerging category in eAdvocacy blogs (grouped through their intention to influence on social issues) is the BridgeBlog. 

As a Harvard sponsored site Global Voices notes, "Bridge blogs” are blogs from a country or region that speak to a global audience.  In particular, the intention of the index they are building is described below:

This index, as it grows will be a resource for people who want to understand what's going on in different parts of the world from a personal perspective, as well as a journalistic or encyclopedic perspective. We hope this will be a resource for the mainstream media as they look for local voices to expand coverage in parts of the world they routinely fail to cover, as well as for individuals.

The Global Voices index of Bridge Blogs is different to Current TV, or a number of similar citizen journalist sites out there in that it aims to become a resource for traditional media - representing an underutilized opportunity of blogs to influence traditional media directly, rather than to compete with it.  This is the true promise of Bridge Blogs - to connect the sometimes irreverant conversation in the blogosphere to the arguably still influential world of mainstream media.  The more blogs out there that can fit this category, the more influential (ital.) blogs will truly become.

BlogDay2005

Yesterday was Blog Day 2005, a day when blogger Nir Ofir suggested everyone post a recommendation of 5 new Blogs (preferably, Blogs different from their own culture, point of view and attitude).  Looking at the list of posts about Blog Day, it was fascinating how far the idea travelled, from Ofir's original posting on June 21st through to Blog Day 2005 yesterday.  Timsoft, a Romanian site posted a great review of the impact of Blog Day, including Technorati's account of more than 300 posts that linked about the day.  It's easy for blog readers to retreat into just reading RSS feeds that they subscribe to, or links from blogrolls on favourite blogs.  Blog Day certainly forced me to think outside my world and find new sources of inspiration and information.  And here are my five favourites:

1. Accidental Hedonist - Lots of great content about food and drink - and a really useful list of products containing high fructose corn syrup (in case you were wondering about the source of America's obesity problem - look no further).
2. Global Voices Weblog - A compilation of many international blogs out there ... one of the great blogs I uncovered in my quest to find several new global blogs to add to my reading list.
3. DesiPundit - A listing of sites and news from the Indian blogosphere.  Thank god at least one of the "something-pundit" sites out there is actually Indian ...
4. Scappleface - This has to be my Washington DC based contribution, an anthem of a blog for those who reject traditional news media for it's biases - at least there is a site out there reporting the news "fairly imbalanced."  If only it were true.
5. Adverblog - This blog is in my industry, but all about new campaigns across Europe.  It's a continual source of ideas and inspiration for my work in the US.

(Via Hans Mestrum)

360 Degree Digital Influence

Though I consider myself a marketing-guy at heart ... the past few years of my career have been spent working first in advertising agencies, and most recently in a large public relations agency.  Ok, I know they're all connected - but today I'm glad that I'm in public relations.  With the rise of blogs, and the entire world of consumer generated media - this idea of personal influence in the digital world intrigues me.  But more importantly, I love the opportunity to join and become a part of it through the discussion of my PR peers through blogs.  Somehow, I feel the online PR community has embraced this medium more than other marketing disciplines, perhaps due to our affinity for the written word.  In any case, I think our place as [interactive] PR professionals uniquely qualifies us to advise clients on the topic of digital influence online.

Based on our initial successes in working with several of our clients on this subject, today Ogilvy PR formally launched our expanded 360 Degree Digital Influence capability.  As John Bell notes in the press release (and blog post):

The growth of personal media—blogs, wikis, podcasting—combined with the exploding importance of search have kept us busy throughout the year. We actually see these trends as part of an overall shift in digital influence.  With our new expanded offering we have a more sophisticated approach to help our clients really connect with a whole new breed of influencer.

Of course, I know you could look at our new offering as the latest announcement from yet another PR agency on how to "harness the potential of blogs."  Let me say for the record that there is currently no "Ogilvy Blog" (though we are planning one and have jokingly called it the "Blogivly" internally).  But if you look at our team, you will find that we are bloggers, and we do understand what makes influential communications messages online.  We routinely read, analyze and discuss blogs with clients, we are already helping clients become involved in the blogosphere - and most significantly we were recently able to use blogs (with the help of several generous individuals from the online PR community) to spread the word about our dying colleague Shari Kurzrok in order to help her get a new liver.  That experience continues to inspire our team to build our capability in helping clients use blogs and more consumer generated content for social marketing, awareness, eAdvocacy, as well as consumer marketing, or healthcare communications.  360 Degree Digital Influence is about all that.

Are Bloggers the Historians of our Time?

This weekend I came across Joel Achenbach's weekly article in the Washington Post Magazine on the topic of blogs.  In it, he satirically notes the growing influence of bloggers and blog culture on himself and his readers:

I constantly tell myself: Ignore the blog. Do your work. You are an enormous literary figure and cultural icon, not a mere "blogger." You must produce high-end journalism with grand themes and huge groaning multi-syllabic words like "eschatological," and you can't be dribbling away all your ideas on the blog. The blog originated in January as a catch basin for mental detritus, for the kind of stuff not good enough for print, but too good to waste on casual conversation or, worse, mere thinking. But this spring I began allowing "comments," and the blog suddenly mutated. America, it turns out, is full of smart, clever, creative people who happen to have no interest in working and whose employers have unwisely given them Internet access.

It's true that bloggers see the world differently once they start blogging - my own experience being an example, where often I see marketing or advertising messages and think about them in terms of blog posts.  The concept of influence, central to this blog, is the question that the blogosphere is struggling to answer.  Beyond today's readership, is there any truth to the grandiose view of bloggers being the chroniclers of our time, recording a "chorus" of daily observations for future generations to look back on and know what our time was like?  There are some vocal resistance to this vision - and attempts to place blogs on a new level of importance:

The word "blog" is literally shorthand for "boring;" a vulgar, overused word that strikes your ear with the dull thud of a cudgel to the soft spot of a child. It's an abbreviation used by journalism drop outs to give legitimacy to their shallow opinions and amateur photography that seems to be permanently stuck in first draft hell. (from The Best Page in the Universe)

Ok, so not everyone is a believer.  Truly, with the glut of consumer generated media content on the Internet growing at an astronomical rate - there are millions of discordant voices out there, rather than the chorus it may become in the far future.  But if my blog is a way for me to leave my thoughts behind, even though it may only consist of my "shallow opinions and amateur photography" - it still feels like a contribution.  At the very least, so I can share those thoughts that I believe to be "to good to waste on casual conversation" - as Achenbach writes.  Whether or not they survive as time passes ... I don't believe that's really up to me anyway.

Yahoo Taps Celebrities to Blog about Cancer

In a fascinating combination of blog culture and pop/celebrity culture (something Yahoo is getting better and better at - probably thanks to Terry Semel) - the new Blog for Hope is a partnership between the site and the American Cancer Society designed as a 30-day event which enlists the help of celebrities such as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Fran Drescher (aka The Nanny) and Deepak Chopra to "share the triumphs, insights, and personal stories of how cancer has affected their lives."  Ultimately the goal is to connect individuals and build awareness and help bring an end to cancer.  Check out Lisa Brown's post for some great details on how the idea got started.

The idea of enlisting celebrity posts is not new - notable examples such as Huffington Post have been out there for some time ... however this combination of celebrity, health and social marketing is a new manifestation of eadvocacy that I find intriguing.  Will this effort result in a groundswell of activities among bloggers to build awareness of an issue that has relevance for the entire world?  It was a similar question we began to explore through our efforts in the blogosphere to help a friend and colleague, Shari Kurzrok, to find a liver donor.  Yahoo, the American Cancer Society, and (to a lesser degree) my colleagues at Ogilvy have all struggled with the same challenge recently: harnessing the power of blogs and consumer generated media to build awareness of a social issue, and move readers from awareness to belief.  In our experience, awareness was significant - with hundreds of sites talking about Shari and linking to her blog site.  I imagine Yahoo's Blog for Hope will accomplish the same thing on behalf of cancer and cancer research.   

The Personal Reputation Tourism Phenomenon

I love the concept of financial tourism - a term referring to the act of logging into an electronic bank account to "visit" your money ... just to check and verify that it's still there.  But what about personal reputation tourism -- the idea that some Internet users are spending minutes each day, hours each week simply engaging in activities to validate their egos and see what others have said about them?  When I started on ebay, I found myself logging in on occasion to check my feedback rating.  No other reason.  Sometimes I still do it, and it got me thinking about where this might fit in the spectrum of online activities.  It's not online shopping, not online information gathering, just online validation seeking.  I am not talking about Googling my own name, though that may be a part of this idea.  I mean the phenomenon of logging into my Typepad account before heading into work to see any new comments, trackbacks or visitor stats.  I mean looking at a comment that I've posted on Amazon to see how many people have rated it. 

People care about their reputation, and in the online environment, they have a much more quantifiable way of measuring it (a group called Opinity has published some interesting thoughts in this area).  Do people like me?  Do they think I'm smart?  Well, no matter what someone may tell me - online I can look at what they have posted anonymously, or traffic levels to a particular blog post and get an idea for myself about where the truth lies.  And this external validation feels good - in a grade school kind of way, I begin to understand who likes me - and who doesn't.  That in itself is a powerful notion, and one that I think has been a big part of what propels ecommerce sites, online communities, and even marketing campaigns to success.  Having the biggest product selection or the best interface cannot in themselves provide an emotional connection.  Personal reputation and ratings systems online can do that.

Hyper-Targeting and Why TV will Lose Smart Advertisers

Orbitz Chief Marketing Officer Randy Wagner says [in this week's BusinessWeek article - "Cable's Big Bet on Hyper-Targeting] reaching consumers with ads they won't skip is a priority.  She likens the goal to Amazon.com's strategy of recommending products based on past purchases.  "It's so relevant, it feels like a service instead of selling."

I had the chance to meet with Randy several weeks ago to speak about the marketing challenges facing the Orbitz brand, as well as the travel industry as a whole.  The interesting insight from those meetings which I can definitely attest to first hand, having spent the past week on the road ... is that the travel industry has weaned customers away from the idea of expecting service more than any other industry.  If a plane lands on time, and the staff isn't rude to us, we're thrilled.  In this environment, there is an erosion of expectation coupled with the erosion of trust written about often by media and advertising skeptics.  How do we rise above this?  How does the Internet offer a way forward unlike TV, or radio, or print, or any other medium?

I think the difference lies in a passive experience versus an active one.  Targeting on television, as written about by David  Kiley in BusinessWeek (available online to subscribers only) is inherently flawed, in my view.  It  attempts to measure what people are watching and then group attitudes based on shows.  The problems with this method are numerous:

• Multiple people use the same television
• People often "watch what's on" - not indicating a preference for that show or even a belonging to the target audience group, but rather a laziness in changing the channel ... not a great metric to target with
• Televisions are often running when no one is watching

Contrast this with the Internet and a similar targeting exercise in this medium.  The potential is vastly different:

• Users are profiled based first on what they tell you - from having registered
• Sophisticated profiles can be created based on what they do, not just who they might be
• New options can be presented real time to interact with this audience
• You are guaranteed that someone is at the other end of the line, because they are interacting

For any of our clients trying to avoid the "ad skipping generation"  - the fact that the Internet is the medium to focus on seems to be the clear conclusion.  At least, until Cable can come up with a "hyper-targeting" technology that can come remotely close to what we already have on the Internet.

Visual Search and the Future of Search Engine Marketing

I tried out Grokker today, the latest release from Yahoo! offering a "visual search" tool that groups search results contextually into circular clusters.  Despite a somewhat clunky visual interface with some strange mouseover behaviours, it definitely has promise for giving users a more intuitive way to use online search more powerfully to hone in on the most relevant results for what a user is seeking.  Another promising visual search tool, Newsmap has what I find to be a more intuitive view focused more on the content and less on graphics.   A quick list of some key trends in enhancing search I've noted just over the few months includes:

1. Advanced Sorting - at first only the realm of online retail sites which offered users the ability to sort search results based on price, product, brand, discount, etc ... now this tactic is extending across many retail and non-retail sites such as online travel aggregator sites (Kayak and Sidestep), and real estate sites.  Yahoo has a beta release of a service termed Mindset which offers the ability to sort by intent, from purchasing to researching.  Clearly a powerful way of helping the user get the most relevant results, and setting them up nicely to charge a premium of keyword advertising through Overture for those sites that appear highly on the purchasing side of the scale.  Smart.
2. Visual Grouping - taking search results and putting them into clusters to help users hone in on the type of information they are seeking.  Examples of sites like this include Yahoo's Grokker, The Hive Group's Newsmap and Tagcloud, a folksonomy based blog search tool that allows you to cluster by keyword mentions and get an understanding of relative buzz words within a search context at the same time.  (Now Technorati has something similar too)  My only problem with the Grokker idea is that there doesn't seem to be a relative scale to illustrate importance of clusters.  For typical searches for a single source, this may not be an issue.  But for research-style searches where you are trying to get a picture of the landscape online around a particular issue, visual grouping search has so much more promise.  Perhaps this may be something they are considering adding to future releases.
3. Self-Learning Search - I first experienced these types of searches a number of years ago when we were implementing a notes-based intranet at Didata.  It was the most promising search technology at the time -- learning search, that could refine itself based on what you clicked on or noted as relevant and not relevant.  Unfortunately, it usually forces an extra step from users in order to work, the kiss of death for innovation in an ease-of-use driven space.
4. Niche files/mediums - I love Google images.  It's saved me lots of research time over the past year in finding images that I need quickly, from client logos for proposals to resource imagery for presentations.  With Google's new video search tool, the range is complete.  I can now go online and use Google to hone in on files in PDF, PPT, DOC, images, and video.  Maybe in the future I can go and search for PSDs.  But then I guess that would make Google a facilitator of copyright infringement, wouldn't it?

So what potential do all of these innovation trends offer for search engine marketers?  My guess is that visual search and other such innovations will offer marketers a greater ability to reach users not only based on their activity, but on their intent.  And yes, we will be paying a premium for it.

Do you Gmail? Why Hotmail is failing ...

I have a Gmail address.  In fact, most people in the web industry that I know are now using Gmail for their defacto personal email addresses.  About a year ago at this time, it was the ultimate cool factor.  A badge of honor among the techno-elite, Google's invitation only viral strategy was driving people to bid as much as $200 on ebay for their desired email address.  But now some say that the coolness is dying down.  Ok, so my mom has a Gmail address too ... that doesn't make it uncool, does it?  Well, maybe it does. 

The one thing that is clear, though, is that for most of us who use a Gmail address, we abandoned another email provider in order to do it.  In my case, that was Hotmail.  My hotmail account was definitely the direct causalty of the arrival of Gmail, but it was also the first web-based email account I had.  As a result, I have signed up for the most things from that account, and now get the most junk mail there.  Are they paying for that initial victory?  Since then, they have been perennial "me too" innovators after Gmail and Yahoo.  They upped their storage limits last, added new features last, and today they announced the new MSN personal homepage which has features which duplicate those already available from competitors. 

MSN's strategy of dominance in personal communications through the Passport network and features like IM has, in part, been based on the initial popularity of Hotmail as an email service.  Unfortunately, it seems that people have been surprisingly willing to change email addresses - punching a hole in that strategy.  Email addresses are not like a surname - held by individuals for a lifetime.  They are more like a home.  We love them while we use them ... but when a better situation comes along, and the time is right, we're not afraid to move. 

Does time of day really matter?

A new report from eMarketer offers some new data in answering one of the most often asked questions in our industry: does time of day really matter for email marketing?  The report notes:

• 41% of Americans check email first thing in the morning
• 18% check email right after dinner
• 14% check email right when they get back from work
• 14% check email right before they go to bed
• 40% of email users have checked their email in the middle of the night

Oddly, the most popular place to check email is in bed (23%) -- followed by in class (12%).  At least I can understand not having better things to do in class ...

But anyway, the point is that email is unique as an online marketing medium in that you can effectively time stamp when your message gets delivered, though not necessarily when your recipient is interested in reading it.  Television and radio both offer those advantages, but less so these days with the timeshifting of TV (and now radio as well with a growing number of programs actively podcasting).  What of online advertising, though?  What if we could time stamp the delivery of online banners?

Apple had an interesting online execution I saw the other day on Yahoo! promoting the new Dashboard Widgets available for OS X.  The ad, which I happened to see in the morning while checking my email (I guess I'm part of that 41%), makes the link between their product and the relatively common morning routine of checking the weather online.  A revelant message at a relevant time - and it connected with me, a home mac user running OS X.  Time of day was a core component of the ad's relevance and presumably its effectiveness.  I would have been far less likely to click if I saw this ad in the afternoon or evening.  Was this a random timing, the subject of chance - or were these banners time stamped for morning delivery?  And if they were, perhaps it should indicate to publishers that this could be a premium worth charging for.  Forgetting the potential billing nightmare that would be, I know more than a few advertisers that would gladly pay for the privelege of delivering their message at a more opportune moment - if it was possible.

Blogs and the Marketer's Quest for Brevity

This past weekend I went out to a local antique market to find a gentleman selling hundreds of old advertisements from magazines over the last 60 years, framed and mounted.  I bought one for a Hartmann Wardrobe Trunk ... a great illustrated ad with more than a paragraph of descriptive copy.  In fact, all the old ads had lots of descriptive copy.  Contrast this with the recent Webby Awards, where each winner had to give a five word acceptance speech.  I don't discount this element (and media hook) that makes the Webby Awards such a unique experience - but what does this say about the average consumer today?

Is it even possible to get a target audience to read more than a few words of marketing copy?  Email subject lines (typically 8 words or less) can determine whether an email is read or discarded immediately.  The basic fact is, people scan more than they read online -- a fact noted many times by Jacob Nielson in his guidelines to writing on the web.  In our culture, time is at a premium so no one has time to read anymore.  To get messages through, marketers have to be invasive.  It's the situation that Seth Godin points to for the rise of "interruption marketing."

But then, there are blogs.  They are on screen, nonlinear, use creative grammar, and can be of varying length (ok, most are pretty short).  They are being read, subscribed to, and actively searched.  People spend hours of their valuable time each day reading them.  Blogs are not usually soundbites, but can offer some of the most compelling marketing messages out there.  On a print ad or Canon's website, I may not take the time to read a long description of their latest digital camera.  But on a blog or RSS feed from a credible site like http://www.dpreview.com/news, I'd read (and print) a full 10 page review. 

Brevity is not the soul of blogs as it has become for other communications mediums.  A blog that is credible and relevant will make it through online information filters and connect with a target user, irrespective of length.  And that certainly reverses the trend in marketing copy over the past 50 years.

Videoblogging - the next big thing?

From discussion boards and newsgroups to blogs to podcasting ... new forms of content creation are evolving the user-contributed "DIY" model of the Internet.  I posted earlier about online photo albums as a symbol of the growth of content sharing online among the general online population.  Blogs and podcasting are part of this trend, which (in recent months) have evolved and worked their way into the commercial sector driving corporations to create blogs and popular radio personalities to syndicate their content.

But for an average user to develop video content and make the jump to videoblogging (also known as vblogs, vlogs or vogs), it seems like the barrier will be far higher.  Not for the aspiring directors and video enthusiasts, but for the same 8 million Americans that have created blogs.  Will videoblogging really be the next natural step?  Apart from special cases like the Tsunami video blog phenomenon, isn't it just too complicated to gain the same traction as written blogs or even podcasting? 

An alternative theory is that vlogs could take a reverse growth cycle to other popular forms of content creation.  Where blogs and even podcasting have largely relied on the collective passion of individuals to establish their popularity ... what if videoblogging were to experience it's true growth from the involvement of organizations and current content provider groups?  It's easy to imagine CNN evolving their decision to launch online video news into vlogging efforts.  Corporate blogs with vlogs integrated could represent the next evolution in connecting a human face with consumers.  Product support, crisis management, consumer marketing, Dyson vacuum-style spokesperson campaigns - each have interesting opportunities with vlogs.  Is it possible that dreaded and maligned corporations might be the ones who help videoblogging truly grow into the next big thing?

Sports and the Internet

Nobody would ever voluntarily watch a big game on time delay.  The time shifting (or "extreme time-shifting") of television will probably never effect sports ... because you just have to watch in real time.  In fact, TiVo itself notes that less than 10% of sports fans watch Monday Night Football on time delay.  Last night when I was watching the Pistons game sitting in a friend's house during a visit to Detroit -- I noticed people weren't actively avoiding the ads.  In fact, we were watching and enjoying them.  It's the Super Bowl effect, but not on as grand or expensive a scale.  But what made those ads worth watching last night during a mere regional basketball playoff series broadcast on TNT?  Were they just funnier or higher budget ads?  [And by the way, who knew TNT ran more than just Ted Turner's favourite old movies?]

Maybe they are not any better.  It's just the audience dynamics of sports junkies.  Could it be that sports viewing is becoming the testing ground for the "great convergence" that all of us internet marketing professionals wish for?  The perfect world where viewers are watching TV, surfing on the Internet, and communicating through mobile devices on SMS and MMS -- all simultaneously.  When did fantasy football become such a religion?  And if it truly is (with more and more converts each year) ... then how can marketers not associated with the NFL or one of the big cable networks take advantage throughout the season?  One big bang ad during the Super Bowl may be the strategy for www.godaddy.com this year -- but I wonder what it will be for the next Go Daddy in 2006 ... 

Where to get Online Statistics

As one of a handful of Internet professionals in a PR agency, I'm continually asked for lots of stats to back up proposals as well as using them to support or inform my own recommendations for client work.  Here are several of the best FREE general sources for Internet statistics I've found out there:

ITFacts.biz - A GREAT site updates all the time with new stats and indexed by industry categories.  You'll find lots of useful stuff here.

Pew Internet - One of the most credible sources for stats and reports out there ... anytime they release a new report, you can bet it will generate media coverage.

ClickZ Statistic Articles - A page listing all recent and archived articles relating to online statistics.  Sometimes they publish new reports here, but often they report on results from other sources.

Nielson Netratings - Most of their stuff is highly valuable and highly expensive, but this link is to their free reports area where a limited subset of their research is available.  It could provide a useful nugget or two.

eMarketer eStat Database - A good database with lots of research reports that generally cost a few hundred dollars.  Using their Browse feature at the bottom of the page lets you drill down on many abstracts, some of which have useful diagrams and data points to support your work.

WebMetro Statistics - Decent collection of stats indexed by article headlines and spanning over several pages

Statistics you won't find on Ebay - A very useful collection of stats on usage of Ebay, including a list of the most popular listing categories, how many bids items receive on average, and how many auctions are won last minute.  Note, the data is from late 2003 - so it's a bit out of date but I haven't seen anything more recent.

Listing of the most viral emails - This page is continually updated with funny viral emails that you might have received over the last few years.  Emails are indexed by category, rating, alphabetically, or by weekly best.  A great place to track buzz around viral emails (as long as they are humorous).

Domain Name Statistics - An authoritative list of worldwide domain name related statistics including how many total domain names are registered, a breakdown of number of IP addresses by country, and registrar stats.

Bugaboo markets strollers online to parents

While in New York this weekend, I passed an interesting bus stop poster with a picture of a unique looking baby stroller, and the URL http://www.bugaboodaytrips.com - nothing else.  As a new parent, I buy the same crap all parents do.  Graco stroller, Baby Bjorn, those new plastic baby food containers (because glass jars are soooo 2004).  Yep, unlike any other time in my life that I can remember, I'm a total sucker.  Most new parents are.  Because we're amateurs.  Ask any parent of older kids or multiple kids ... they laugh at us.  And we all know single people laugh harder - watching us struggle with all this stuff.  Parents don't travel light.   Except in Sex in the City, apparently.

The site promises to offer ideas for parents "who want to spend an inspiring day with their child that does not include eating sweets or watching Shrek for the 322nd time." The site has printable PDF downloads for the urban parent - venues like Chinatown in NYC and the historic canals of Amsterdam.  Having gone through Chinatown earlier today with our normal amateur stroller - it was rough in places.  And their site made me want one, for when I happen to be walking around Dublin, or Edinburgh, or LA.  It's an aspirational luxury item.  Perfect for marketing on the web.  Even though I know I'd only use it for a few months before my kid outgrows it ... $700 bucks doesn't seem so bad.  Ok, I guess I'm still a sucker.