know | Future

When I was growing up in the late sixties/early seventies, the term generation gap was always front and center as the country was roiled by what seemed at times to be an incipient civil war across generational lines. The fact that we no longer hear the term bandied about on the press does not mean however that generational schisms have disappeared. Peer just for a minute into the world of a teenager, and you will see them floating in a technology bubble that would have been inconceivable to those of us old enough to have lived through Watergate. Between the cell phones, texting, pervasive access to the Internet and an ever expanding market for video games, you will also find a category of entertainment with the unwieldy moniker of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, MMORPG’s for short. They represent the most socially disruptive technology to have gained a solid foothold in the new millennium, they are already creating a vast generational gap, and they are going to impact your business directly.

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CNET points out the positive and negatives of community generated advertising videos on YouTube. Agencies fear consumers taking over the brands image on the Internet as evidenced by the Volkswagen ‘terrorist’ video last year, on the other hand imitation is a sincere form of flattery and a cheap way to extend the brands’ reach.

On the net, you can find the best and the worst of anything, usually in the same day. In my travels through YouTube today, I unearthed one of the best ‘viral’ videos I have coma across. The dueling geeks in this video developed by the young folks over at Barats and Bereta on behalf of Windward Reports is right on target and will find a fertile audience in the cubicle farms of high tech that house the company’s clients. Watch on YouTube

Then I found another viral video, this one produced by agency.com as part of it’s efforts to win an assignment from Subway. I must say that it has been a long time since I have seen such a terrible combination of naivete, faux cool and annoying navel gazing as is displayed in this video. I can only hope that all those responsible have been sacked and Subway has gone elsewhere. Watch on YouTube

According to a report released yesterday by the Newspaper Association of America and picked up today by the Boston Globe ,newspaper circulation overall is down 2.5% from the same period last year. The two biggest losers on the list were the San Francisco Chronicle with a drop of 15% and the Boston Globe with an 8% drop. My first thought, which is echoed in the article, is that it is not surprising that the two most wired and tech savvy cities in the country should see an exodus away from newspapers and onto the web for news. The problem for newspapers is that those defections are not going to newspaper sites, but rather to Google News and other web only news sites.

Tivo today has announced today the release of Product Watch. This new capability will allow users to select favorite categories or brands and TiVo will deliver ads that match the criteria to their main menu. The service has been designed with the participation of many advertising entities including IPG, OMD The Richards Group as well as Comcast Spotlight, the advertising sales division of the cable operator (I guess this means that the partnership between them and Tivo is bearing fruit).

General Motors, Sony Pictures, Lending Tree and Kraft Foods are the premium advertisers for their respective categories and will be producing custom content targeted at the Tivo service, presumably longer format video. Though there is no mention of other capabilities, it is safe to assume that this product will make use of existing Tivo capablilities to allow user interaction such as brochure requests etc.

This is really a testing ground for the viability of advertising on demand, where the consumer opts in to receive targeted ads. (more…)

In the April issue of the Digital Journalist, there is a column by Terry Heaton that proposes an interesting concept for the future of advertising in a consumer centric pull environment. Terry posits that advertisers should be moving away from the traditional role of attracting attention from consumers that are tuning out traditional big splash advertising and instead producing small bits of advertising content to be set free on the Internet to find their way to self-targeted consumers.

Though not revolutionary by any means, Terry’s model with advertisers producing discrete encapsulated content: bits of video, images, specifications, product information, xml data dropped in an rss feed and passed through a three stage sieve of search engines, dumb aggregators (automated blogs) and editorial aggregators (blogs and social networks) on their way to consumers is simple and elegant.

The problem as always, is tracking success so that clients will pay you fairly for the production of that advertising stream.

via the MIT Advertising Lab blog

Two developments late last week have pushed e-readers to the fore:

• The Belgian publisher De Tidj, which is running a test of an electronic handheld newspaper reader device from Phillips, has run the first ad in the e-reader edition for Rabobank. (If you follow cycling Rabobank sponsors an elite pro team)
• Microsoft and the New York Times have announced a new software set to debut with the notorious next gen MS operating system, Vista that promises to provide a natural interface to an online version of the newspaper.

During the presentation at the American Society of Newspaper Editors 2006 Convention in Seattle, Washington. (full transcript available here) one of the tidbits that came up was that advertising size and shape will be automatically reformatted to fit the device which is being used, a radical departure from current web practice. Sadly. no mention was made of any low powered devices such as those using e-ink technology from Phillips or Sony’s Librie. Until MS supports a low power reference platform like that, I am afraid this will be just an evolutionary step, tablet pc’s or even the new handheld UMPC platform just consume too much power with their active screens.

Mass High Tech reports today that Tom Tom Go has inked a deal with iconic Dunkin’ Donuts to integrate their store locations into their products navigational database. This is a great example of how to get past the clutter and deliver the most relevant sort of advertising to drive traffic to your store and as far as I know, the first example of such an explicit deal.

There are a number of reports (here, here and here) about the Belgian newspaper De Tijd planning a pilot project of about two hundred subscribers for an electronic handheld newspaper. At A4 size (metric for 8 1/2″ x 11″) devices built by Phillips around MIT MediaLab spinoff E-Ink, will be the largest product of its kind, almost double the size of the pictured Sony Librie, and promises to be the closest experience yet to a real newspaper. Subscribers will be able to update them at special stations or at home over high speed Internet. The paper plans on offering different advertising at different times of day, and though they will not do so for this trial, they have the ability to refresh the content throughout the day. The big difference between this and reading a web based newspaper on your laptop is that E-Ink technology only uses power when changing the screen contents and hence has a very long battery life.

Via Adverlab

Though most cell phones nowadays have GPS capabilities, very few systems beyond some commercial fleet software and the occassional track-your-kids applications have popped up.  The promised land of passerby targeted advertising has so far gone unfullfilled.  Transit TV is bringing location triggered advertising to a bus or train near you.  Though they are currently missing the most important public transit market in the country, NY, they do have a presence in Chicago.  Servers in transit stations refresh the video screens in the buses and trains with video content delivered via the Internet.  GPS receivers in the vehicles can also trigger special content based on location.