The Digital Advertiser

At a recent GGDMelb (Girl Geek Dinners Melbourne) we casually discussed digital advertising and many around the room were on opposing views regarding what metrics to track in order to serve up contextual advertising. I ineptly attempted to discribe a video I’d seen on YouTube titled, ‘The Break Up’.

The video was created in 2007 by Microsoft for the company’s Digital Advertising Solutions. An ad for advertisers that illustrates where things are moving. The concept of looking at consumers in a new way deserves our attention.

What if we could go beyond counting hits on a page? What if we could think outside the box treating our customers as individuals rather than stereotypes? What if instead of guessing what a consumer wanted to buy we could ask them and deliver a product that fulfils their expectations?

I think the answer comes from a few leading philosophies- these being: the long tail, permission marketing and more intelligent algorithms. Since we’re no longer looking at websites, but platforms –how can we do better than banner ads and one off promotions? Why are we trying to sell things online like they do on TV? They are not the same media- not even close!

A few years ago I attended NextMedia, a conference in Toronto, Canada that was extremely influential with how I arrived at my current frame of mind regarding Digital Advertising. The first lecture was about marketers learning about word of mouth advertising from the Grateful Dead.

In an article by Gareth Rees reviewing a book on this very subject he attests, “The Grateful Dead knew this as far back as 1965, as David Meerman Scott and Brian Helligan reveal in Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead: What Every Business Can Learn from the Most Iconic Band in History. According to the authors: “The Dead pioneered a ‘freemium’ business model, allowing concert attendees to record and trade concert tapes, building a powerful word-of-mouth fan network powered by free music.”

By encouraging fans to share bootleg copies of live events the band was able to reach out to an ever growing audience. The fans felt apart of the legacy and held a sense of duty to share their experience. This is why decisions for regulating digital media are so controversial. By restricting what users can and can’t do with copyright protected media (such as music and movies) companies are restricting fans ability to fully envelop themselves in the brand. Fans want to share not because they want to commit an illegal act, but because they want to go beyond the current limited experience. Quite simply, there is too much control and not enough listening.

So where do we go from here? I believe the answer is in personal recommendations, personalised customisation, transmedia and exclusivity. If a brand can cross multiple forms of media there are more places to sell a niche product which is what consumers are looking to buy. There are lots of examples that prove when a band distributes content for free and diversify their offering they earn more in sales. The authors of Wikinomics, describe prosumption as a non-passive consumer who wants to participate in the creation of products and services. Allowing fans to create their own video clip is only the tip of the iceberg.

Modern advertising is about relationships and that takes time to cultivate. It also takes more time for marketing to be able to create more than one newsletter and more than one special offer. The hardest part is letting go of control and providing tools allowing consumers to take on the role of authority. But the benefits of personalization mean that your brand wins more loyal fans because consumers appreciate being part of a conversation rather then disruptive ads. It’s harder and more time consuming and that’s why businesses don’t try harder to do a better job, but that short-sighted thinking will see their demise in the years to come when competitors sneak up from behind with a more authentic selling proposition.

When you switch your thinking from my website to my platform you'll begin to see that it's not as important to currate content as it is to allow users to customise their own experience. The more you allow a user to create their own content stream the more you'll know about them. The more users rate, review and talk to you about your brand the easier it will be to sell to them. That's the fantastic business model that is Threadless. Stop trying to tell consumers what they want and start listening to them.

So how do you get in front of consumers in the first place? Check out Hunch and Get Glue.

Your Community Manager is an Artist: Let’s Celebrate CMAD

January 24^th, was Community Management Appreciation Day (otherwise known as CMAD). It’s a new role in many companies and there isn’t lots of information out there about best practice, etc. Many companies hide their online community team for fear of disgruntled customers pulling a Travis Bickle. (I’ve never heard of anything like that happening, but it seems to be a common ‘security’ measure.) So it’s really important to celebrate these vital individuals who are commonly unseen.

An interesting thing about being a community manager, or a moderator, is that every company views this role in their own unique way. A community manager might be a part of the marketing or PR team at one company and a part of the customer service team at another. Jeremiah Owyang has created a great post about the corporate view of a community manager.

In truth, the community manager is neither marketing nor customer service. The community manager is something entirely unique from traditional departments. I believe that the community manager is a storyteller and an artist. A storyteller who understands how to lead groups of people down a common thought. An artist who inspires people to participate and share their own content.

If the community manager is to sit in any particular department it should be within an innovation team. Thought leadership is very important because too often the tools cripple an online community to reach greater heights. It’s sometimes hard to see the dollars and cents behind registered users the tools provided are minimal and horrible to use. Businesses are thinking, “now that I have an email address I can push products and potentially sell something”- wrong. This assumes that you know what the registered user wants, but in actuality; the registered user is a guide to brand longevity.

For a community to work there has to be a purpose for it, i.e. cultivating trust (sharing personal information), collaborating on editorial content, creating a tool, designing products, brainstorming ways to improve software, sell something, etc. The community manager’s job is to spot the top contributors and give them support. To build new chapters of the story which inspires members to flesh out details and develop the plot.

When regular users get bored of the same old conversation things turn negative quite fast. Regular members need another layer of engagement. Too often the loudest and most negative members end up sucking all of the energy and inspiration out the community. The focus gets lost in the reports of bad behaviour, spam and negative feedback. The individuals who are contributing to the story are the heart of the community.

Community management is about setting up a plot for fans to role play. Once the rules are outlined participation becomes a game. As an example, one of the first forums I managed was for a short lived Canadian TV series called Falcon Beach. Fans of the show loved to chat in the forum, but there needed to be a subtext–otherwise; the discussions quickly inflamed into arguments about who knew the most about the show and its stars. I decided to create a section for fan fiction; which gave the die-hard members a project that other members could rate and comment. Following my analogy I gave the fans a new chapter to write on their own. Although we don’t know what the story will be about we know the rules of creating the story. This made the fans feel like their participation was leading them to uncovering the unspoken thoughts of the show’s characters and helped the writers see their characters through the eyes of the audience.

Communities need a purpose- this is why Wikipedia is such a success. There has to be a common link beyond the initial motivation to participate; as well as, recognition for quality contributions. Otherwise, the vibe of the community turns feral and you’ll have a Lord of the Flies scenario on your hands. With the example of Falcon Beach it was very important to use the ideas from fan fiction and explore ways to involve the fans into the storyline of the show.

A community is a story that is never really finished; the real-time version of The Never Ending Story. This is why marketing or public relations cannot “own” an online community- you can’t influence it with promotions. Essentially, the community guidelines are the prelude to the story. The purpose of the community must be clear and sandboxes need to exist to house members who don’t expand the plot. The intention has to be very clear and the community manager becomes a gardener attending to the weeds and beautiful flowers. The result is a story that has a pulse and its own unique purpose.

Don't Advertise On Me!

I haven’t posted in a long time- happy New Year! I can’t believe it’s already 2011. A lot has happened over the past few months. One being that I’ve scored a dream job at Lonely Planet, I’m now working with the digital editorial team and loving it. What this means is that I’m no longer as focused on Online Marketing (but I still believe that everything relates to it).

One of the interesting topics that came up this week revolves around user generated content and how to incorporate advertising into the experience. This is a hot topic for a lot of businesses looking for new ways to create ads- especially contextual ones.

The main difference of contextual ads and regular ones is that the user has a relationship with the platform as a content contributor. Many businesses (I think) forget that although the service is free they are also being repaid with free content by a non-paid contributor. Consideration must be paid to this delicate relationship.

Here’s a sample of a few current online business models:

The first one is from Gmail, the free web service has been criticised for scanning through the content of your email messages for keywords in order to serve up contextual ads. I’m not bothered as a user, but I do wonder how many people actually click on the links provided.

The next example is Twitter, although I haven’t personally noticed them as a user I have read about the launch of “promoted tweets”. It’s an interesting concept, but I’m not entirely sold on the application of ads into the tweet stream. I’d rather see a banner (as much as I detest banners) or something that is outside of the tweet stream I can ignore (no, I’m not missing the point I just don’t think they need to be quite so disruptive).

MySpace (bless their white cotton socks) still have no idea how to manage this issue and put gigantic animated banners front and off-centre of user profiles. And banners follow the user right into their profile dashboard. There are 2 banners – animated, obnoxious and completely non-contextual since the paid placement is only about impressions and has little to do with clicks. A better system is one that provides a user the ability to rate an ad or stop it from being seen.

MySpace has a similar model to Facebook and LinkedIn in that they allow anyone to advertise via a self service tool. They claim (as do others) that they offer precise targeting, but we’ve seen that rarely are these ads able to reach their target audience. Unless you’re prepared to spend a lot of money to ensure you serve up enough impressions 24/7 for a minimum of 3 weeks. Essentially, in order to win at this game as an advertiser you need to outbid every other advertiser to ensure your ads are seen.

This is an unideal experience because most users’ instinct is to block it out, and in doing so the experience instantly becomes annoying. The issue is also that users don’t tend to include enough information within their profile for niche advertising to work. Knowing that a user likes music is not going to help a struggling band sell tickets- but sadly the ads aren’t even about music on MySpace. As you can see on this particular day they’re for a dating service and a dance show.

While Facebook doesn’t have perfect systems for contextual advertising I think they’re better then MySpace or Twitter because they don’t embed the ads into the user’s account dashboard and you have the ability to remove the ad if you don’t like it (although another one will instantly take its place).

LinkedIn doesn’t have the same ability for users to interact with the ads served to them, but at least the ads don’t interrupt the user experience and only exist in one specific area.

The main lesson, I think, is to allow the user to interact with ads so that they can get better and more accurate in terms of context. People are not statitics in this regard and the relationship should be personal. Also, try not to disrupt the user experience by being too flashy - less is more.

In terms of the user experience, contextual means that it makes sense and doesn't infringe on the users ability to do what they came to the site to do. I'm not visiting a friend's profile to see what ads are there- it doesn't make sense in my opinion to monetize profiles, but it does make sense to insert ads into a browsing page or a page where the user is searching for something specific. Providing ads as recommendations based on the context is a good basis for getting the job done.