Advertising

Interesting use of a Twitterfeed to make money

February 26, 2009 By Dan Thornton

It’s not exactly engagement or interaction, but women’s online publishing and advertising network Glam has been using a widget which allows manual editing of the Twitter feed around an event to ensure the content is suitable for advertisers (From Venturebeat).

The widget is available throughout the Glam network, and to third-party publishers, who receive a cut of any revenue. And soon even publishers outside the network will be able to receive micropayments via Paypal.

It’s a traditional model, but one which appears to have worked, at least for the #Oscars.

But it suffers from the traditional problem of display advertising – in which the amount of eyeballs doesn’t always translate to the amount of people actively clicking on an advert. Although the sponsorship in this case was for a skincare company, which is likely to appeal to a female-targetted content network, would positioning it next to Oscar content give it relevancy or credibility?

And what does it mean for people who use Twitter hashtags without the knowledge that another party may profit from them?

After all, they were originally used to collate information for aggregating information about fires in San Diego, and have since been used for collating conversation around disasters like #Mumbai along with mainstream entertainment and sporting events.

It raises the eternal content question of the internet – should aggregators be able to collect all the revenue without compensating the content creators?

Which of the following would you purchase?

January 23, 2009 By Dan Thornton

A lot of blogs are talking about the new advert for Cadbury, which comes from Fallon on the heels of their Gorilla and Airport adverts.

I’d agree it’s entertaining, but it happened to coincide with me witnessing the following video, shot with a Samsung Pixon phone.

The question is which one is more likely to make you part with some hard-earned cash – the professional advert, or the video shot by someone to test the product they’ve just paid for with their own money?

A case for Advocurrency?

I’m not saying that advertising/marketing shouldn’t be entertaining, or professional shot and edited.

I do wish some of it was more informative, and was based around making my life suck a bit less – for instance, T-Mobile sorting out their customer support, or Cadbury‘s sticking more Dairy Milks in their Roses selection boxes.

How about alternating between one piece of pure entertainment for awareness, and one bit of making things better for people buying your products?

The global economy, advertising and blogging

January 20, 2009 By Dan Thornton

I’ve been having a lot of conversations about advertising recently, whether the subject is relevancy, media publishers, or bloggers.

"Another Crap Advert" by Banksy (London 2004) — “Another Crap Advert” by Zohar Manor-Abel on Flickr

It’s something that the current economic climate has definitely driven to the front of the minds of a lot of people, as they look to the future.

One of the things that struck me is how a downturn in advertising might affect my blogging here and on 140char.com, and then I happened to come across an interesting post by Steve Hodson about Paid Blogging.

I’m lucky enough to have a job I really enjoy, and didn’t start blogging as a way to earn an extra income – for me the intangible benefits are the ones I enjoy, whether it’s sharing ideas, meeting new people, or possibly being able to be involved in new opportunities etc.

But at the same time, I do run Google Adsense advertising on both blogs, along with Amazon Affiliate links in the hope that I can cover my hosting costs, and then spend anything extra on books and gadgets. Plus, it means I have some understanding of how they work if I ever want to consider using them for other projects.

Steve’s post outlines his frustration at being told the advertising model is broken, particularly for an up-and-coming blogger, and yet the alternative revenues that are suggested don’t seem to provide an alternative.

The trouble is that none of the popular internet movements or theories points to a redistribution of wealth necessarily.

Open Source means free as in ‘free speech’, not ‘free beer’.

The Long Tail doesn’t say you can be rich existing in the long tail of content. The success stories are the aggregators, or those that can make it far enough up the tail to make the living they require or aspire to.

Web 2.0 allows you to communicate, collaborate and connect, but some people will gain more from this financially than others.

And too often we miss the fact that many successful people within paid blogging have several projects and revenue streams going on at once, if not hundreds in some cases.

There’s a feeling that by putting hard work into something we’re entitled to get fair payment for our efforts and get the payoff at the end – something that often isn’t true.

Which is why it’s about focusing on making the most of the journey.

And I do disagree with him that bloggers can’t make money from revenue streams aside from advertising. But again, not everyone who self-publishes a book, releases an E-Book, or produces blog-related merchandise will be successful – and we’re still at an evolutionary time for online content and revenue, and for advertiser adoption. But by offering the best possible value proposition for anything you try to monetise, you stand the best possible chance of making it.

And I think 2009 will be a tipping point for new mechanisms of advertising/revenue. Whether it’s from people looking to improve the result for content creators and publishers ( for instance, tools to create your own revenue share and blog network), or improving things for the recipients of revenue efforts.

But I really don’t have the answers here. If I did, I’d have retired to my own island by now! But what I’m really interested is in your opinions, questions and ideas. So how can blogging content creators thrive, and how would/do you monetise it?

Two adverts that irritate the s*** out of me

January 5, 2009 By Dan Thornton

It’s the perfect time for ranting as I’m still feeling a bit poorly, so I thought I’d highlight two television adverts currently irritating the hell out of me.

First up, is the PG Tips homage to a Morecombe and Wise sketch, mainly because it’s so completely irrelevant to me, but seems to be on constant repeat at the moment on the channels I tend to watch. Especially Film 4, completely distracting me from whichever movie I’m watching.

I’m in my (very early) 30s, and Morecombe and Wise had pretty much peaked before my time
Even then, the PG Tips ad isn’t as good as I remember the original sketch being.
But most of all, I don’t drink tea, and neither does my partner.

I realise the last point marks me as being outside of the target demographic of the tea industry, and so they won’t count me as being a huge loss or influential. There are currently two packets of tea in the house, both of which have probably been here since we moved in – one posh packet which my parents probably brought with them out of desperation, and one cheap packet for any guests who didn’t fancy the posh stuff.

But the fact I’m not a tea-makers target is exactly my point. I’ll never buy it. I’ll never talk to anyone about buying it. And I don’t have the necessary technology to avoid it. So why inflict it on me?

But that’s just a case of traditional irrelevance – there’s a far worse offender out there:

Oh Sweet Lord.

It comes from Norwich Union, soon to be renamed as Aviva, as it’s part of the Aviva group and known under that name internationally. So changing the name might make sense from an efficiency point of view, particularly when job cuts are being repeatedly announced.

But what I don’t get, and I’m trying not to use the word ‘brand’ to join Mark Earls, is the way it has been done. For starters, they’ve had to pay Bruce Willis, Elle MacPherson, Alice Cooper and Ringo Star to talk about how they wouldn’t have had fame and fortune without changing their name.

That’s right. Forget starring in Die Hard, or being part of the Beatles. Or any inference their stardom is down to talent, luck and making the right career choices. After all, if only Molly Ringwald had changed her name, rather than turning down the lead roles in Pretty Woman and Ghost, for example. I won’t even mention Engelbert Humperdinck.

Or the fact that most actors in the UK change their names due to Equity rules stating there can’t be two performers with the same name.

We get a voiceover telling us how changing our name can allow us to become who we want to be, and that Norwich Union is becoming Aviva after over 200 years of the same name. (My first thought was the confusion with the bus company, Arriva, that served my hometown)

But what it doesn’t tell us is what NU/Aviva wants to be.

There’s no reasoning, no belief, and nothing to make anyone think this is more than an attempt to save money on headed stationary.

Why couldn’t they use the name change to publish a clear belief which might benefit consumers, and could be easily said and repeated? ‘We’re changing the name, and making sure you never wait longer than 30 seconds in a phone queue’ for example, or ‘We’re changing the name be more efficient, so we can lower our prices by 5% when you renew’. Or even just some honesty ‘We’re changing the name to save some money and stay in business in tough times – so you don’t lose your insurance cover when you might need it’.

Has no-one else ever watched Crazy People?

Every Single One of Us should look at Every Single One of Us

December 12, 2008 By Dan Thornton

I’m learning that you can always rely on someone like Jonathan MacDonald going that bit further! And he’s certainly doing that by driving a new movement with a simple aim ‘making communication better‘. It’s well worth taking a look at Every Single One of Us for the whole story, and then making sure you subscribe to hear about any updates.

From Every Single One of Us:

The world we are now in, will show an astronomical shift in commercial budget toward this area – but currently, few people know for sure how this can come about.

There are a number of reasons why that is and this movement proposes the following 4:

A lack of pertinent information
A lack of understanding how to interpret information
A lack of will to action on information
A lack of skill to action on information

Taking these 4 points and applying them to any other nascent situation, we see they are common.

In our ‘No Way Back From Here’ volume, we will apply these 4 points )although some may already have one or more covered).

For example, you may have the will to action on information and a great deal of skill, however there may be gaps in the understanding or access levels. The gun is loaded, you know how to fire it, but why, at whom and when?

Alternatively, you may have the world’s leading information from research and popular opinion, but lack the will or skill to action anything.

Its all OK. We are all ‘right’.

It doesn’t matter which part you are involved with or which part you are ‘covered’ on. We can move things forward together – but this movement proposes we first need a way to ensure we all have access to the information required for us to collectively interpret it (or at least, those that wish to).

Once we have this, we can help others gain the will to action and the skills to do so (if they desire).

He’s also laid out a 7 step plan to achieve this, as well as initial activities within step 1 – covering the lay of the land. It includes a major research project, a series of TV interviews, an ongoing series of conferences, seminars, workshops and master-classes, information gathering and looking at VRM.

I think this is probably one of the movements with the clearest idea of purpose and direction, and possibly most likely to succeed in achieving some sizeable goals, judging by the starting point. The biggest risk might be Jonathan exhausting the rest of us….

Seriously, go to http://www.everysingleoneofus.com right now, if you haven’t already. And take some time to look at what’s being established…