Posts Tagged ‘adtech’

Reflections of a day immersed in social media of one type or another #atsyd Ad:tech09

March 11th, 2009 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Social media

Regular readers will know that I attended the Ad:tech Sydney 09 conference today. It was an enjoyable and interesting event. Later in the pub, we talked about Facebook quite a lot. Even later, we talked about social media or at least I did. We were at the Hopetoun in Surry Hills to see Pivot. Pivot were supported by a group called Seekae, strangers to me this group rocked and made themselves a hard act to follow. I found out about the secret concert via Facebook, funnily enough; Pivot who are from Perth were performing under the name of Fire Island (presumably a reference to the Red centre of Australia).

I think I thought quite deeply through both acts. I almost texted this line:

It’s time that we re-assessed what Media actually is?

Much later I believed that we are ultimately moving towards a confrontation between Biology, Chemistry and Physics, and we are on the side of Biology. Convergence is the dominant theme in time. Discuss.

This begs the question. Can convergence every represent the individual?

I am off track.

Taken from another angle I wondered whether the speakers and organisors at Ad:tech Sydney 2009 represented the intelligensia of the marketing industry. One has to wonder, when the discussion is focused completely on what commercial advantage we can gain from social media.

Coming back to the question of what is media I believe that what is occurring is a progression of sorts. Fly on the wall documentaries and Reality TV represent a metaphorical highway which We took on the road of Media Fragmentation.

Today every individual IS THE ‘Media’.

Taking a quick tangent, I also pondered the proposition that social media is the latest tool of class and control.

In theory, social media is a wonderful but if I was asked to explain my point of view in the most simplest terms, I would say that the things that we describe as a ‘the Corporation’ and ‘Government’ will come to control social media in the medium to long term.

To summise:

If this were a film, I would advise people not to continue watching if they disagreed with this statement:

“If you put 20 Monkeys in a room for infinity, they would eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare.”

But this thought process a.k.a. theory presents an opportunity for the commercial sector and Government to demonstrate that they genuinely mean well.

One thinks that they will fail to take the opportunity.

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Ad:tech agenda dominated by branded competitions rather than conversations with brands #atsyd

March 11th, 2009 by Daniel Young | 10 Comments | Filed in Social media

It’s day two at Ad:tech and we continue to hear examples of consumer focused campaigns run by advertising agencies (in the main) which are generating ‘engagement’ between brands and consumers. What’s surprised me about the conference is the focus on projects or campaigns as opposed to long term stakeholder engagement programs. This fact highlights a key point for me and this is that the advertising industry is culturally aligned with campaigns with a start and an end point while social media strategists and the PR industry are focused on building and managing relationships with influencers over time.

The fact that no-one seems willing (or able) to define Influence or Engagement is further evidence to me that the content of the conference is very project focused, which is reflective of an industry which is not ready or able to put the stake in the ground when it comes to qualitative measures. The Smirnoff Experience case study was interesting and compelling (original, not so?) – the team talked about the ability to turn on and turn off the community.

My second observation, which supports, the point made above is that many of the campaigns projects are focused on competitions or contests, which involve a prize (7:Eleven – free Slurpies), (Vodafone NZ – 10,000 prizes plus $10,000 cash prize for the winner); (V – $100,000 in prize money). In a sense this is a form of sponsored conversation between the brand and consumer – if it represents a conversation at all.   

This is a theme that Mark Jones picks up on here.

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MySpace launches demographic targeting capabilities at Ad:tech Sydney 2009

March 10th, 2009 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Blogging, Music, My Blogroll, Social media, Technology

I attended the ad:tech 09 conference at the Sydney Convention Centre today, which provided plenty of food for thought on a wide range of digital marketing issues.

The conference kicked off with two keynotes in the morning and then split into three tracks.

The presentations that I saw were very case study driven, which is nearly always the case with these types of conferences. Agencies and clients were happy to talk about the revolution that ‘is occurring’ or ‘has occurred’ and to report back on successful campaigns and projects but few were willing to tackle some of the more challenging topics and issues facing the industry. I saw four members of one panel swerve the question of: What is influence and how can it be measured?

This is a topic that I plan to come back to.

Fox Interactive Media announced ‘four new initiatives‘ to ensure that it ‘enables marketers in their fight to be more efficient and relevant’.

One of the four initiatives – MySpace Lifestages’ will allow marketers to target Australians in a range of lifestages, including:

  • When a MySpace user has graduated from Uni
  • Is engaged to be married
  • Is Pregnant
  • Has given birth
  • Has lost a job
  • Has entered a new job
  • Has had a birthday

MySpace will provide marketers with access to this data in real-time (its based on the users’ self expressed interests on their public MySpace profiles’.

Some facts about MySpace Australia:

  • More than 2.4million uniqe Australian visitors in Jan 2009 – according to Nielson Online
  • Australians spents 2.3million hours on MySpace during Jan 2009
  • 65% of MySpace Australia users are 18 years or over

The theme of brands engaging with consumers via existing social networks was a dominant one during day one of Ad:tech and its clear that huge value lies in the access that these social networks have to user data. Further, the value held in this data is the key to successful monetisation of social networks. The ability of social networks to harness information and present it in ways that are useful to marketing people will determine the future of social networking.

Users have – in the most part unwittingly – accepted this process by agreeing to the End User License Agreement, which is an essential step when signing up or becoming a member of a social network but one wonders how consumers will react in the long run when it becomes apparent to them that brands have access to this information and are using it to target them with offers and promotions. The onus is on the marketing industry to do this in a way that is truly engaging, entertaining or useful.

There were examples of some creative and engaging campaigns today.

I think there is an inherent danger for today’s popular social networks – the pressure to successfully monetize will increase over time (accelerating from now) resulting in them making more and more information available to marketers and potentially alienating their members. This may create the opportunity for new social networks to come in with promises not to share personal information with marketers.

Of course, there are other methods of monetizing social networks. This post by Laurel Papworth provides a comprehensive run down while Robert Andrews at The Guardian predicts a tough 2009.

Some more thoughts on day 1 from Ben Shepherd at Talking Digital here.

More from me from Ad:tech tomorrow.

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