Here's something I don't quite understand the economics and protocol of...

MLB pays to advertise, right?  Whether it's the league or teams or whoever, I see baseball ads in the subway.

Yet, if you want to use MLB stuff in a video game, you have to pay them for the license.

But, when MLB wants to be in Second Life, that's free, except for the product costs of hiring someone to contruct the virtual ballpark.

So let me get this straight.... MLB pays to advertise in old media channels that people are paying less and less attention to, only pays minimal production costs to play in what a lot of people believe is the future of online, and then gets paid to be in a growing market where attention is full and engagement is off the charts?

Am I missing something?

Was having a conversation with a friend today who feels a lot of pressure from her PR firm to learn about all of these new social media tools so that her clients can take advantage of them.

She's also given 10-20% of her emerging media time for education, and her emerging media time is only 50% of what she's supposed to be working on for her clients...the rest is on traditional media.

Meanwhile, the folks that make social media attractive... the movers and shakers of MySpace and the blogosphere... they're doing it fulltime.  They're tagging and reblogging and connecting and pasting cool widgets into their pages everyday.

Anyone who doesn't live in that world everyday, not as work research but recreationally, because they love connecting and discovering new things online, is simply going to fall behind. 

It's actually pretty funny, that a lot of these young people who are social network junkies don't realize that the skills they possess are highly sought after by marketing and PR firms.  They have an innate understanding of what flies in this world.

Whether you work for a VC firm, PR firm, in marketing, for a brand, a media company, etc. you need to find a way to integrate these tools into your real life, otherwise it's always going to be something "extra" that you never get to or don't fully understand because you're just a casual user.  There's no blog you can read to get all the answers.  No conference that will help you get it.  What also won't work is hiring a bunch of interns that you think are "cool", because no single intern is going to be representative of anyone else.  Unless you live in this social media world, be prepared to watch it pass you by like an outsider.

 Scott Karp writes a great blog called Publishing 2.0 and he's talked several times about paying for advertising in a world where lots of content can be created and published for free.  What's the point?  Why bother?  Why not just throw some free ads up and let virality take its course?
It's a great point, but I have a few counters.

In the instance of Wendy's creating a MySpace profile, which anyone can do for free:

"What if Wendy’s won’t pay? Will MySpace have to tear down the page? That would be a great advertiser relations program — policing for unpaid commercial pages and tearing them down."

Actually, that's entirely fair and should be expected.  There are lots of instances of software and APIs that are free for non-commercial usage but paid for a commercial license.  If you are using MySpace to make a buck, doesn't MySpace have a right to take a reasonable piece of that buck?  There would have to be tiers, of course...     My local pool hall shouldn't have to pay much more than the price of a Yellow Pages ad for their profile.

Plus, going paid for commercial, just like Craigslist is doing for NYC commercial real estate, gets rid of a lot of spam. 
What's the value of paying?  Think of MySpace like the RedHat of the ad world.  RedHat packages free Linux with a service guarantee and support.  That's what I think of when I think of Advertising 2.0...  sure, viral videos are free to post, but you want more than just a single number--hits.  You want demographics.  You want to see what other types of videos people are watching.  You need data and there's where the MySpaces and YouTubes should really be ramping up.  Give me a whole reporting package that I can show my boss when I create a commercial MySpace profile that tells me a lot about the users.  What's the #1 band of the people who friend me?  Age?  Race?  You can't do that with a free profile but that's very valuable data.

That's one of the things we're focusing on with our upcoming consumer product.  Anyone can sell a virtual t-shirt direct to consumers or as a sponsored ad buy, but I think the difference is in the data and ongoing relationship you build with the users.  Businesses thrive on consumer data and I think that's going to be a major asset of Advertising 2.0.  If you can put a viral video in front of someone, cool... but what you really need if you are a business is a call to action to convert those folks into customers or at least some useable data.  The platforms have, need, or are definitely working on building out those tools.

I'm really getting into these "avatar notes".

 As if you couldn't have predicted this when I joined...   Oddcast is now blogging!  Check out CEO Adi Sideman's first post.  I'll be adding posts from time to time as well.

If you are doing anything in interactive marketing, you should be reading Rohit's blog. His position at Ogilvy gives him a lot of insight into how the role of PR and marketing is changing as digital media changes.

The other day, the terms he used for the role of brands in social media really struck me.

Participate

Commericalize

At the end of the day, brands all want the same thing...   influence, attention, sales... whatever.   This is capitalism and we are all aware that all the free stuff on the web comes at some kind of price. 

But how we encounter those brands can vary dramatically.

"Participating in a conversation" is a very human thing... and for a brand to do it, they need to act more human.  This includes sharing, mutual respect, openness... all sorts of things we come to expect by the actual people around us.  If brands can't do this, it is unlikely we are going to sacrifice any attention that we normally give to our friends in social media.

Every brand manager out there should take out a piece of paper and write down three ways that their brand "participates in a conversation".  If they can't think of any, they should talk to people like Rohit, because they're probably commercializing.

And you thought I was kidding.

I think we should have a contest... what is the most bizzare *legal* service you could sell with a Sitepal avatar.

I have to admit, this site is slightly compelling if for nothing else than the fact that Russian accents are sexy.  I think it's a James Bond thing...    

"She loves me... she stabs me in the leg with a poison tipped shoe-knife... she loves me... she stabs me in the leg with a poison tipped shoe-knife."

We've got a money back guarantee on these characters, so I'd like to issue a challenge for someone to come up with a product a Sitepal can't help sell...

AdSense is easy.  It takes minutes to create a text link and then you can blow out as much advertising as your bank account can take.  That's scaleable.

Banners are a little harder.  Someone has to draw it.  It might take an hour or two, but once its done, you can repurpose.

When you do something a little more creative, it's harder.  Things you can only use once don't scale as well, but they can be a lot more entertaining.  Plus, its much more appealing to the consumer.

Rich media is a great example.  When TV commercials get reporposed for internet video, its mindlessly easy to setup.  However, the level of ease is only matched by the level of hatred people have for TV commercials following them onto the web.  Easy to setup, easy to fail, to alienate... easy to never click a video again.   When I hear the talk about YouTube monetization, I'm hoping we'll see some really creative advertising appear within this unique community, but I also recognize that it might be difficult to make happen.

Or, on the other hand, aren't brands looking for unique?  Don't they want different?  Certainly the agencies should be pushing this, no?  For them to come up with unique applications for all of these web communities, it would be more revenue and more work... but hopefully better results as well.

So how do you create a tradeoff?  Are creative campaigns destined to become more niche and more specialized, making them more appealing, but also less profitable and more people-heavy.  Are there even enough talented creative types around to think of these creative brand interactions?  How does creative and unique scale? 

Totally agree with Fred here...    Postrolls are are really an untapped opportunity.  After you watch a funny baseball clip, a link to buy tickets or sports jerseys makes total sense.  Even better would be if you let users pick the link.

Feedburner lets me approve or bag the ads that appear in my feed and on my site, and I've turned down a few penny stock links here and there... and I think that improves the overall quality of the experience and content on the site.  YouTube should work the same way, letting me turn down advertisers I don't believe in.   

From Searchviews...

"Marketers have been getting excited about the recent distribution deals cut between search engines and social networks....Now consider social networking sites. Users visit pages in those networks not because of the concepts being discussed, but because of the people they know. You may like the same bands, movies, books or sports teams as your friends, but that’s not why you’re ending up at their pages. You’re there to catch up on what’s new with your crew. This is going to completely change the way marketers need to message to these groups."

Can I repeat that?

"This is going to completely change the way marketers need to message to these groups."

Unless you get you users intimately involving themselves in your brand, like this young woman who has a Coach wallpaper as her background in MySpace, its all just going to sound like push advertising for products we don't want, like or care about...   non-user selected or MeVertised advertising is going to be the pop-ups of Web 2.0...  people will do everything to block, get rid of, and avoid this kind of messaging.

What kind of CPMs do you think she's getting on her page for that?  How badly do you think Coach wants to be able to push that kind of thing out?

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I disagree with Fred's assertion that YouTube could be making a ton of money on pre-rolls.

Pre-rolls, in their current form, suck.

No, really suck.

The other day I was watching some great wiffleball footage.  Anyone who ever grew up playing would be really jealous of these guys who seemed to record every single pitch on video over eight seasons.  Man, I pitched this one game where I gave up one hit and whiffed 25...  of course I walked 11, but still...   Anyway, repurposed TV car commercials and mortgage ads would have completely ruined the experience for me.... and that's all YouTube really is... its an entertainment experience.

We put up with TV commercials because, they're more than just entertainment.  There's social capital being built.  We're watching the same shows as our friends...   the price for knowing what happens on Nip Tuck is that you have to watch some commercials... but socially, being in the Nip Tuck "know" is very valuable.  Plus, we're planted in front of the TV... not much on...   the value of switching is pretty low.

But when I watch these wiffleball clips, I may send them to a couple of friends, but its mostly a solitary experience... just pure entertainment value.  I don't need to watch them, and there are a million other distracting entertaining things on the web to choose from.  If I had to watch a 10 second preroll in front of each one, I'd quickly lose interest, because the entertainment value would suffer. 

So how else can YouTube monetize these videos?   Rather than a full pre-roll... how about just a "Sponsored by, around the player.... re-skin the player."  Maybe not the same CPM, but that wouldn't really ruin my viewing experience.

More interesting would be the idea of a user selected theme of some sort...  How about breaking down the elements of a brand and allowing the user to mix them in.  So, with the wiffleball videos, the user could be given a little editor that allows him to stick a logo and some text right on the corner of the screen...  they select from a menu of choices... they might pick Nike or Adidas or Gatorade or something.   Or, let ESPN sponsor the sports videos, pull them onto their site, throw in the SportsCenter theme song, etc.  In that scenario, the owner of the video knows something about the content and the audience that allows them to select an ad that fits, in a way that's not obtrusive.  Plus, knowing that the owner selected it also makes it part of the content, versus something YouTube tacked on at the beginning. 

Plus, the breadth and quality of video advertising has to get a lot better...   maybe companies should be putting live offers out on YouTube for people to create advertising for them and make the videos themselves the advertising.   

Pre-rolls are non-contextual.  They degrade the user experience.  They degrade the quality of the content.   They are not expressive the way the content itself is. 

I know its hard to be creative with your advertising and scale at the same time, but I don't think you'll ever see anyone put up with 10 second prerolls on half the videos they see on YouTube.

I dated a brand once.

We had a great time... lots of fun...  got really close right away, but then, suddenly, I got this note:

"Dear Charlie,

     You've been great to me and I really enjoyed the time we spent together... the money you spent on me... all the friends you've introduced me to, but now this marketing campaign is over and I feel like I need a change.  I'm afraid of just being the same brand all my life.  I'm not ready for this kind of commitment...  I hope you understand.

Love,

Brand-y"


I should have realized it would happen.  Marketing slogans change.  Products get redesigned, usually, for the worse--alienating loyal users.  Its so hard to maintain a consistent relationship with a brand, because they're always changing... looking upstream, downstream, diversifying, etc. 

Its even worse in a world of sell side advertising where you pick the ads you want to run, because they're brands you like.  Then, they just get yanked from you when a campaign runs out.  That's because marketing is campaign driven.  It has an end.  It is seasonal... driven by television lineups, upfronts, etc.  Brands aren't consistent, and so users have little loyalty to the message.  Its only a matter of time before I stop obeying my thirst to drink Sprite or quenching my thirst to drink Gatorade (Is Gatorade even the "thirst quencher" anymore?  I don't remember.) and I'm doing some other action besides just drinking it.

So at some point, Careerbuilder is going to stop paying us to maintain Careerbuilder Monk-e-mails, even though consumers still want to send them.  I mean, are they supposed to run this forever?  Well, maybe...   Its an interesting problem...  certainly it will be a messy breakup...  just one day the "send to a friend" button disappears and your consumer says, "You won't make monkey for me anymore...   we haven't monkeyed around in weeks...  are you seeing another consumer??" 

Persistence in branding is going to be an issue in a sell-side MeVertised world where the consumers think they own the brand and they have to be told they were just "borrowing" it.... unless we see longer term commitments on the parts of brands.  Like, what happens if American Apparel loses interest in Second Life?  Will they close the store?

AdAge left out a key criteria in their overview of mainstream vs. cutting edge advertising...

"While marketing prognosticators and technophiles rush into the future, raving about the next big content delivery system or ad model, the fact is most Americans -- notably adults with steady incomes -- still get their content the old-fashioned way."

I agree, but how many of the key influencers are still doing this, but the bleeding edgers, trendwatchers, trendsetters, etc. habits are changing...  you can't argue that.  You don't have to reach everyone on the first try.. .you have to reach the right people... the people that other people want to be like.  These are the people that are always trying stuff first and get social capital for that.  There was a time horse and buggy sales were still strong, too, you know.  If you're not adopting to new technologies, you're going to find yourself far behind very soon.

I mean, seriously, who would you rather market to, my 88 year old Nana, or her 27 year old RSS enabled grandson who she knows is cool and wants to be associated with.  :)

Our Jeep Compass Karaoke Site won Adobe's Site of the Day today.    I can't really sing, but if anyone sends me their performances, I'll be happy to post them!  Charlie@oddcast.com

So Mike Oliver posted on my post on MeVertising, and made a good comment on it, so now I'm reposting something from his repost... 

"A brand is now only as influential as its consumers."

Brilliant.

When I first met with Oddcast, and even before that, I was starting to get the sense that the idea that "markets were conversations" was being taken further.  Lines were being blurred.  Blogging and other user generated media brought the brands down from the ivory towers to the people, even if they came kicking and screaming.  They were ours.

When the brands woke up from being dazed, it seemed that they began to like us... to want to get closer to us.  They wanted to be in our networks, to be friends with us.

At first, I started calling this phenomenon "Brand Association."  The things I buy wanted to be closer to me. 

Then I realized that, even more than that, they wanted to be me, and me to be them...   and to a large extent, I am them.  I don't drink, so when I'm out at bars, I'm Sprite guy.  Its become a running joke, but ask any of my friends who they think of when they see a Sprite, its probably me.  I am a Mustang and Jamba Juice, and Macy's, too.   When I bring these brands with me online through Flickr pics of the car or moblogging from Jamba Juice, what it really is is "Brand Expression."  I am self identifying with a number of brands.  I have a relationship with brands that I am committing a part of myself to.

Henry Jenkins covers this phenomenon in his new book and new blog:

"I wanted to suggest the various ways that people are trying to attach value to emotion in the new media economy...the ways that product placements sought to connect the emotions associate with entertainment onto products embedded within that story.

Some aspects of what I am calling affective economics are deeply embedded in current advertising practice, referred to by the various terms Bogost identifies ("lifestyle marketing," "associative advertising," "relationship marketing," etc.) ...

I am convinced that this shift represents the best means we have of getting media producers to reassess their relationship to their consumers and that seems to be key to the long term viability of participatory culture...companies...will have an economic interest in opening themselves up to greater participation from their consumers...."

Some aspects of this, as Henry points out, are not totally new.  We've always had lifestyle marketing... but something about this new trend... this new closeness, where brands are opening up and becoming vulnerable to form a stronger tie to consumers... it all seems a bit different.

When I was at USV, digital media and marketing stuff generally went into my VC & Technology category, but I think I'm in a new playing field now...  and so I'm going to start categorizing it accordingly.

But none of the terms out there are quite as direct as I'd like... so I've come up with something that says exactly what I feel this is...  MeVertising.  Its a blurring between my own identity, brand association, ad consumption, expression, etc.   

Its buying the Nike t-shirt.  In that scenario, who is advertising what?

• Is Nike advertising on me, literally?
• Am I advertising that I subscribe to the Nike lifestyle, whatever that is?
• Am I advertising that I am a sophisticated t-shirt buyer?

And I don't even want to go into what that does to the economics of the whole thing...

So, over the course of the future of this blog, I will be doing a lot of MeVertising posting, tagging things MeVertising in del.icio.us and Technorati.  Feel free to do the same and join me in the exploration.