Coming to you live from New York, it’s the AdMonsters OPS NY Live Blog! Advertising Week may be coming to a close, but it’s not over yet. Stay tuned as we capture our lively agenda, covering digital strategy from the multi-screen experience to programmatic premium and beyond.
9:00 Rob Beeler kicks off OPS. It’s time to forget the tired buzzwords (c’mon, you must be as sick of these as I am) and focus on what actually works and how – exactly – we can move the industry forward. Let’s focus on strategy.
9:21: Jerry Shereshewsky starts by talking about the slide rule. Whoa, throwback. I can barely even remember life before my cell phone. We’re in a new age of startling new technologies, and advertising must stay abreast of them.
9:25: Instead of absorbing the internet themselves in the 1990’s, agencies built a parallel universe of young people with a great grasp of the internet who they kept at arm’s distance (generally SoHo). They simply weren’t engaging, evolving, persuading, and selling. Finally, agencies are beginning to incorporate technologies and optimize their use.
9:28: The medium is the message. Not only must we monitor what we say, but also where we say it.
9:30: Just when you begin to think it’s safe to go back in the water, along comes a cohort of new technologies that are just as disruptive as the last and that require you to contort what you’ve figured out.
9:32: Branded content > banner ads. However, you have to create the content. And where does it come from? Agencies, pr companies, digital shops, etc. Roles are continually changing and evolving.
9:36: Outbrain helps publishers get discovered by the right audience at the right time.
9:45: Social media turns traditional marketing funnel upside down: a small number of already rabid fans “sneeze” your message to their circle of friends with little/no cost to you. Simply acknowledging their fanship is usually all that’s required. This process has been difficult to manage.
9:47: Rallycrew shares their shifting model. They’ve been working on solutions to generate social participation.
11:09: After a crazy networking break (Wow, so many people are here!), we’re settling down into our Focus On… sessions. I’ll be reporting from the bitly session, “Data as Currency,” featuring Matt LeMay, bitly Platform Manager.
11:21: Attention > money, and it’s being quanitified every day in social data. But how do you measure it effectively? At bitly, they track clicks. When you look at what people click through to, it’s very different than what they’re sharing. The images you put forward of yourself can often differ greatly than who you actually are. I might like to look at cat pictures, but I might not want to share that.
11:22: Not shocked: most shared links are links that make you look smart. These links are often not what people click most.
11:31: Your audience’s data is valuable to them. Despite gamification, points do not always equal value. However, your check-ins can often provide you with a record of where you’ve been and can allow you to remember where you’ve eaten burritos.
11:34: You need to use data well. You have to add value for everybody. You should make users’ data more valuable to them. Also recognize that people share what they share because they want people to see it.
11:35: Universe of API’s and social data provides the opportunity for low-stakes, high-rewards collaborations, like the one between Foursquare and American Express. It feels far less risky to share your Foursquare account with AmEx than the other way around.
1:30: Bowen Dwelle, CEO of AdMonsters, announces AdMonsters Connect, an expanded content program to serve digital strategists and marketers.
1:38: Rick Webb, co-founder of The Barbarian Group and new employee at Tumblr, is lighting up the stage with images of internet cats and his ideas about how social media, native formats and premium content are leading to a new age in digital advertising.
1:53: Rick seized the opportunity at Tumblr to re-do everything he hated about buying and selling ads – the right way. He’s been obsessed with native advertising and matching advertising with its medium. At Tumblr, Rick gets to do this from scratch (real, paper notebook scratch).
1:57: Tumblr is kind of like a blog, but it’s also a new media property in many ways. It can feel like a community, a media platform, and a microblog – or all three.
2:00: Tumblr developed an analytics platform in about three months. The different ways brands use Tumblr require different kinds of analytics.
2:10: Breaking News: Tumblr has partnered with Union Metrics (producers of TweetReach) to deliver awesome new analytics showing how a blog spreads across a network.
2:18: Fox Broadcasting and Bloomberg took the stage to discuss how technology can help achieve scale and make the most of a publisher’s video library. Conclusion: can’t just throw more video at your audience, but have to drive valuable cvideo views across multiple devices.
2:36: FunnyorDie just kicked off their keynote with some Rocky music. They’ve been creating compelling branded entertainment (over 200 branded campaigns) since 2007 and entertaining me along the way. They just won a Webby for best branded entertainment in 2011.
2:40: FunnyorDie advice: be authentic, take chances, don’t be afraid to fail. Get creative and take a risk – you’ll see the reward.
2:46: FunnyorDie talks about their great success with branded content for Pepsi.
4:32: Associate Publisher Hayley Romer and Kim Lau, Vice President and General Manager of the Atlantic Digital, will discuss new initiatives to address changing consumption patterns, restructuring and adding new positions to better drive revenue and what it means to be a “product-oriented” publication.
4:36: The Atlantic breaks down how they’ve stayed on top of the continually-changing digital world.
4:45: Why not have our marketing team be as well trained as our journalists?
4:47: 50% of The Atlantic’s ad revenue comes from custom content.
5:15: The Wrap Up Panel has begun! What buzzword do you hate most?
5:16: Rob, AdMonsters: “The Year of…” Bob, Kellog: “data leakage”
5:20: “Programmatic premium” seems to be a favorite word. Curt Hecht from the Weather Channel and Bob (from Kellogg’s) discuss.