Kill Banners and Purchase Time

Source

A lot of people are spending time online today, so obviously advertising money is flowing to the internet as well. Yet, time is not really a factor at all when it comes to valuing online advertising. The length of time spend with the brand and the ad is the most important factor in determining the effectiveness of the ad. With banners and CPM, the advertising takes no consideration of the time.

I mean sure the repetition lead to clicks and eventual action, but the repetition itself has no real value. Especially as we are more and more "blind" to the banners and when compared to the well thought recommendations from our peers. Also I might close the browser window so fast that the banner didn't even load, still the advertiser pays the same amount when compared to the person who stays on the page for three minutes. A recent comScore study states that 31% of ads are delivered but never seen by a customer.

This CPM model drives publisher to deliver huge amount of impressions that create web page clutter and a poor user exprience. The problem becomes apparent when we think how effective the advertising is within content, or in many cases is the content. People are motived by and are looking to spend time with the content. Therefore the purchase cost for advertisers should be more like cost per second (CPS) model, where each second spend with the content is valued. The most valuable customers anyway spend time with the brand and therefore advertisers should be more willing to compensate publishers for those high-value users.

This is a very simplified expression on the idea that we will most likely develop further. But think about it. What if publishers would rather have less banners, and more highly valuable content that users are interested to spend time with. Isn't that the picture we all want the online publishing to be?

Future of Curation Networks

One of the hottest social networks right now is Pinterest. It his a nice spot at the need for organising huge amounts of information and our look out for beautiful inspirations. One important aspect is a high rate of female adoption, that continues to drive the adoption of eCommerce. Hence Pinterest is interesting for commerce, as some sources indicate that every click to an webshop site is worth an average of $5 in purchases.

What I am interest is the communal aspect of the service. It heavily focuses on recipes, travel imaginary and to some length fashion. For anyone interested in these, the site is interesting. However, the huge and growing adoption of Pinterest might eventually be the downfall. It might not be able to hold up to its community and therefore loose users to more highly niche focused communities. Curation is not curation if will not be able to edit out the unnecessary noise. Even following feature will not be enough eventually.



So what if we look this from another perspective. What is we think curation as a disruption to marketing, rather than just another social network. Currently online marketing is push with high volumes of banners. What if marketers would enable cashpools for users to create curated contents around topics, and earn real revenue from their curation work.

I think by creating well operating service that enables focus around nodes of interest or brands, we can enable these nodes to create actions that are fulfilled by the crowd. This crowdsourcing will boost highly focused and curated content for relevant target groups. All evolving around the node, rather than in a huge mass of different content. That is the real disruption potential of curation.

Marketers, remember. This could also make the world better by distributing revenue around to the best users. Do not think people are willing to work for free forever. I’m most certainly going to look at niche-curation content platforms as a powerful way to encourage a meaningful interaction with prospects and buyers.

The Demographics of Cool

Last week Harward Business Review had an article titled "The Demographics of Cool". It talks well about the waves that really make some products to become cool and how the message is distributed. Basically the question is about the fact that no longer can advertising lecture or dictate to customers; marketing to the group conversation must be seamlessly incorporated. Basically social media enhances the fact that once in the hands of the tastemakers, consumers gravitates en masse to the seller's offerings. Below is a video with more about this in the form of an interview.



This demographics of cool is a devolution away from segmentation of smart cross-cultural or multicultural marketing strategy. As a society, the western cultures are more and more melted culturally, and the meaningful identity is changing according to the situation you are at the moment. The categories are not relevant anymore and the identity is evermore complex.

Still, the demographics of cool is more than just trying to define a new meaning for demographics. Steve Stoute is arguing that out of hip-hop, a new culture has emerged, one "shared mental complexion" that no demographics can capture. Age, race and income don't matter. Only the mind-set matters. 34-old Indian bluecollar worker, 16-year old high school kid from the UK and 45-year old whitecollar from Japan worker are all the same demographics. In the modern world, urban has nothing to with place or race and everything to with attitude.



These consumers, choose what becomes cool and, more crucially, decide when something isn't cool anymore. Remember the champage Cristal's fall from grace, just because Jay-Z said so? When the importance is the psychologic, the demographic data and quantitative research become meaningless. Because when you define a market by how people in it think, not by who's in it, the definition process is far mor complex and expensive.

Just think of the Apple iPod's now-iconic silhouetted hipsters sporting white earbuds, striking poses. You can't tell if those silhouettes are 18 or 34 years old, rich or poor, black, white or asian, from Helsinki or from Tokyo. All you know for sure is that they're cool!

Album Cover Art as A Branding Tool

Academic

This is a little blast from the past. I think I have never uploaded my academic research work to this blog, so lets correct that mistake right now. And to be honest, currently is it downloaded about 200 times per month from another site, which means that there is interest towards it.

In a nutshell, this work covers areas of album cover and its significance on the branding of music using the band HIM as a case study. I believe music is a product that is mainly sold through visual representation. Although the core product is the music, there is increasing need of cover art, logos, photos, live visuals etc. All this constitutes to the branding of the music.

Download Significance of the Album Cover Art as A Branding Tool!

The main finding of this research indicate a need for thoughtful use of visual aspect in music and also showcase certain characteristics of branding that are useful while producing album covers. In a Post-Modern society people buy the message, rather than the music, communicated through different methods of music, promotion, marketing and branding. Well signified album cover, operating like an advertising, reflects a focused message that is easy for consumers to understand.