DaxThink: Digital life

The Blizzard of AAHs

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:18:00 +0000

A fond memory came back to me this week - The Blizzard of AAHs - the greatest ski movie ever made and the one that started the idea of ski movies.

I am shocked that this was made 21 years ago - I remember being in a ski shop being fitted with horrendously uncomfortable boots whilst a group crowded around a VHS player (a what?) and spent ages skipping through to their favorite bits. Didn't realize I had got that old!!

(The director, Greg Stump, went on to produce videos for Seal, but lets not hold that against him)

Have your question asked at Ad Tech!

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:54:00 +0000

So it's Ad Tech week again in New York, seems amazing how fast these come by. This year the show is joined by Content Revenue Strategies, a show within a show. I will be moderating a panel on Thursday and this is your chance to submit a question that you would like asking to the panelists.

The panel is:

Display Advertising for Search Marketers: Banners Aren't Just for Branding Anymore
The line between text ads and display ads is getting blurrier by the minute. Google allows banners on the Google Content Network and many display advertising networks now offer CPC or CPA pricing for banner campaigns. Learn how you can use display to grab a huge volume of additional clicks and improve your existing text-based campaigns.

MODERATOR:
• Dax Hamman, VP, Display Media, iCrossing

PANELISTS:
• Roy de Souza, CEO, Zedo
• Rob Leathern, Founder and CEO, CPM Advisors
• Div Bhansali, Director, Self-Service Products, AOL Advertising

I expect the topics covered will be broad and include buying models, the changing face of media buying, the role of a media planner / buyer and of course attribution between paid and display.

But, if you would like a question asking then email me at daxhamman@gmail.com and I will ask it for you and let you know how it went - a virtual attendance!

I will also be sitting on a panel later in the day that will discuss emerging platforms. Stop by and say hi if you are the show.

Emerging Platforms: Blogs, Video, Display Ads—Are They Right for Your Marketing?
iPhone ads, YouTube-promoted videos and widgets are no longer fringe marketing vehicles. Many advertisers are shifting budget to these contextual units as a way to diversify their media spend and also drive positive ROI. Find out whether your business should be leveraging these emerging platforms now and in the future.

MODERATOR:
• Saar Gur, Partner, Charles River Ventures

PANELISTS:
• Mani Iyer, CEO and Founder, Kwanzoo Inc.
• Steen Andersson, Co-Founder and VP, Marketing, 5th Finger
• Jennifer Hyman, Head of Business Marketing, YouTube
• Dax Hamman, VP, Display Media, iCrossing

New Google Tool to Analyze Display Impact on Search

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:51:00 +0000

I was delighted to hear news of Google's new tool, Google Campaign Insights, as announced on the Google Agency Blog. Essentially, this tool demonstrates the uplift a display campaign has on your search program in a clear and simple way.

This is important because we know from recent industry reports that the vast majority of display clicks are being generated by the minority of online users, but that online users are positively influenced by a display campaign.

In combination, that data tells us that the view-through (or PI - Post Impression) effect is critical to success measurement of display. However, this remains a contentious point with marketers, the debate centering on the difficulty in knowing if PI revenue is truly incremental. We therefore need to look for quantifiable metrics to prove PI value and one such way to do this is to run a full attribution modelling exercise, something we know is not always simple (as identified here).

So Google's new offering is interesting because for the first time we get a simple way to monitor the influence of display activity, quantified by the impact on search.

Google Campaign Insights assesses the effect of your display campaign on users' likelihood to search or visit relevant sites. Using a test and control methodology, the behavior of users exposed to a campaign is compared to a control group not exposed to the same campaign. This allows us to measure the incremental life that can be attributed directly to the campaign, even if traditional ads are running at the same time.

As always, there are limitations. There is an entry point of a $100k spend on the Google Content Network alone, a big commitment for a media placement not already tested by most brands and agencies, and that we are only benchmarking the impact of the Google Network on search, not your entire program.

However, this is quick, simple and looks effective and we will be testing it with iCrossing clients in the near future.

iPhone Gets Mocked By Droid

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:18:00 +0000

Another clever marketing video, this time Droid mocking the iPhone. I havent tried it, but its great to see some healthy iPhone competition.

Reported by twitter.com/adrants

Pulp Fiction explains Google Wave

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:48:00 +0000

What is Google Wave? How do you get an invite? Will it revolutionize our lives? Should you care??

This video demonstrates beautifully what Wave can do, all based around the soundtrack to Pulp Fiction. Enjoy.

Caution - bad language!

The Truth About Attribution Modelling

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 19:32:00 +0000

Ah, Attribution Modelling.

It seems to be the new buzz phrase right now, and it’s what a lot of marketers are scrambling to achieve because they believe all other marketers have it. The reality is quite different and very few have reached this evolutionary point, and are actually quite some distance from doing so.

Definitely not a sexy topic, but an important one if your advertising programs are going to be optimized.

For some marketers, attribution is just sneaking on to their radar as they hear more and more about the benefits of investing in this area – whilst the marketer of 2008 wasn’t looking for this solution in earnest, the marketer of 2010 will be. For those who have begun to explore, they have uncovered a series of barriers, some of which are technical and some are organizational. It remains on their ‘to do’ list, but is perhaps being pushed down and down by more pressing matters.

Last week I spoke on an SMX panel in NY to discuss the ‘attribution battle’ alongside Sara Holoubek (SEMPO President and Chair of our panel), Roger Barnette (Search Ignite), Kevin Lee (Didit), Alan Osetek (iProspect) and Tony Wright (WrightIMC). The key takeaway was actually that anyone solving this problem is ahead of the masses – within a room of approx 120 people, half had budgets of over $50k and of those about 8 were doing any kind of attribution, but only 2 kept their hands up when asked if they were happy with it.

I suspect the dissatisfaction is partly due to the expectation they had before going into this, perhaps hoping to see accurate models that explain the impact of every click, impression and social mention and to be able to tie them back to the revenue generated. If so, then they would definitely be disappointed as attribution should be considered a macro exercise and not a micro analysis tool.

Hopefully with this article I can provide an overview of the important factors of attribution modelling, and some of the choices that lie ahead of you.

Firstly, why do you want attribution modelling?
Have you actually stopped to think about that question? According to a recent Forrester survey, more than half of web decision makers think it will make them smarter and provide them with a better understanding of their customers’ online behaviour. When I talk to our iCrossing clients and push for a more granular reason, what I hear typically falls into one of two buckets – the need to understand the right media mix and need to take into account view-thru data from display.

Let’s take a typical client setup before.

There will be our proprietary I2A tracking solution that we use for monitoring the performance of our SEO and SEM campaigns, and this tool can also feed us data on direct load. There will often be some affiliate software, an ad server (typically DoubleClick for us) will be present if the client is running display and finally a site side analytics solution – Omniture and Core Metrics being the most common for our clients. Each of those tools has a different approach to tracking and each one of them will have tracking code that is fired at a different point in the click stream. Already we can see why 100% accuracy is not possible!

CoreMetrics will provide reports that show how all marketing efforts add up nicely to 100% of the revenue generated through the website. Whilst there are many ways to implement such a tool, we very commonly see the 30 day cookie window using a last click look back model. By its very nature this favours some channels over others, and it has no sight at all of post impression display data as no click was generated.

Hence attribution modelling comes in to play to give display back the value we and the industry know it has. (See the case study at the end of this article for our latest numbers on the uplift display has on search and site traffic or click here).

The results from this exercise will naturally help solve the 2nd common request, which is to understand media mix modelling and where to invest your spend. If the model demonstrates an impact on natural search from certain placements, then it might make sense to invest further in that area even if the ROI is low.

Secondly, let’s address the barriers to getting this done:
We have already considered the technical mismatch of data above, and the more you dig, the more potential problems will be uncovered. A nice place to start though is to do a little housekeeping and check that your cookies are all capturing orders and revenue in the same way, i.e. net or gross, inclusive or exclusive of sales tax etc, and then to check the cookie windows are set equally. A 30 day window is by far the most common, but that doesn’t mean its the right choice for your business – make sure you are considering the buying cycle of your product or service.

But are you ready for the internal battle? If your organisation has invested in a tool like CoreMetrics that investment goes along way beyond just the licence fee; you can bet a lot of folks have spent a lot of time tweaking it to be just so and also on extensive training. And so a barrier can sometimes be reliability on legacy systems and ways of working.

CoreMetrics et al are great tools, there are only problem in this case is their lack of ability to see the effects of post impression display. Therefore we are looking at a longer term educational program, helping your teams to understand why you want to consider an additional model that allows all marketing elements to be included.

Thirdly, how do you model the data?
On our panel, SearchIgnite showed a few screenshots of their reports for attribution, and they seem like they definitely do the job - I couldn’t help wondering if they work too well though. Roger explained how they tried several models for the client in question, before settling on a cascading attribution model. What were they looking for though? Were different models tried because the previous ones had not revealed the result everyone was looking for in the first place?

SearchIgnite have taken the right path by remaining flexible in their technology as this is such a new area, but does that flexibility create more problems than it solves? How do you determine which model is right for you?

First click?
Last click?
Weighted attribution?
Equal attribution?
Cascading attribution?

The problem with flexibility is its ability to be flexible!

If I am a marketer responsible for a display budget, I am going to push for a very different model than the marketer holding the SEM budget. One possible solution to the argument is to take the “daddy says so” approach – what do Forrester say. Conveniently they have developed a model that is easy to understand and replicate and would make an ideal starting point.

But there must be a really simple solution?
Actually not, but there are many companies, approaches and tools that can help you in one form or another.

Technology vendors such as ClearSaleing and TagMan provide a universal tracking code that can be dropped on to your site and will identify all your other marketing pixels with the same unique code so that the data matching can be done more efficiently. A tool like TagMan also manages your pixels away from the site, and so tag changes no longer need IT resources.

iCrossing (and other agencies) approach this from the dashboard perspective. Our analytics team accept that clients have historical tagging situations and work to collect the data from those legacy systems and map them together to achieve the outcome. The data can be presented quantitatively in Excel or qualitatively in a management dashboard.

There are also options to use ad serving tools and what is being called ‘path to conversion’ analysis; both DoubleClick and Atlas have moved in this direction but the solution requires all data to flow through their system and they typically only work for media spend, not NSO, affiliate etc.

And Akamai could very well be one to watch. Akamai’s primary business is as CDN (Content Distribution Network) working with busy websites and ad servers to distribute their content globally across servers so that every viewer has a speedy experience. But this means they have a sites content flowing through its servers already and we can see from the click stream that they are dropping a cookie from their own domain. It may well be that they are seeing enough data to attribute across channels, but only time will tell.

What’s the payoff?
I felt like our audience at SMX were a little deflated by the end of the session; many had come for that one piece of info that would solve the problem for them, but left having discovered its actually harder than they first thought!

The trick is to get started, to take small steps and try and chip away at the understanding.

To me it’s like when I was a kid and I would go find my kite that was inevitably at the bottom of the cupboard somewhere, all tangled and knotted up. I could spend the best part of the day untangling every knot in that string and miss the best part of flying time, or I could get about 80% of it done and go out and fly my kite. The next weekend perhaps I could invest a few minutes into unravelling the remaining 20% and fly it that bit higher.

Of course, I could have cut the string off completely and just started again! And some of you reading this will have such a complex legacy tracking system that you could spend your career trying to unravel those knots. A fresh start is an option, consider cutting off the string.

But when attribution works and the problems are solved, the resulting data can be very insightful.

iCrossing published a capabilities deck on a travel client that showed what sort of information becomes available when this problem is solved. There had been many research papers that had looked at the display and SEM overlap, but very few that also took NSO and direct load into account too.

You can view the report here. The headlines from the campaign are listed below, and what’s important to note is that without this data, it is likely the client would have removed their display budget and seen their overall marketing ROI go down.

- 13.7% increase in natural search visitors
- 2.5% increase in unique visitors
- 14.8% increase in paid search click thru rate
- 11.2% decrease in paid search cost per click

Useful resources for learning more:
RIP Last Click Wins (eConsultancy)
The Effects of Display Media on Search Traffic (iCrossing)
Cross Channel Attribution Modelling in Action
Attribution Management Buyers Guide Part 4 & 5 – Display Advertising and Exclusions (Adam Goldberg / ClearSaleing)
Marketing Attribution Models (Jim Novo)
How to Move to a Best Click Model (TagMan)

Google day out - San Fran Fleet Week

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 03:04:00 +0000

One of the great things about my job is the occasional free entertainment. Today was watching the San Francisco Fleet Week airshow out on a boat near Alcatraz courtesy of Google. This video is of the Blue Angels, coming in from the Golden Gate bridge and back out over the Bay Bridge.

Microsoft wants you to be a complete loner

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 22:32:00 +0000

There are really very few cases when using 'OMG' is actually appropriate - but Microsoft have delivered by trying to get you to be a complete loner!

In an effort to get the same mac type word of mouth marketing that happens every time a Mac user meets a Windows user, the big M are proposing you throw a launch party on October 22nd for the big Windows 7 arrival.

Really?

As an aid they have created a video to show you how to host a Windows 7 party, and the reaction to watching it can only be OMG!!

This is utterly painful viewing, but so uncomfortably funny you have to take a glance. It's like a car crash or a really bad boob job - somehow you just can't stop yourself from looking! They have even managed to bake in all the proper politically correct stereotypes you would expect with the token geek wearing glasses, the token black man, the token 'older' woman and the token (meant to be) hot soccer mom.

My advice is if anyone invites you round to their house on October 22nd politely say no for reasons of wanting to have an actual life! Then immediately delete them from your phone, block them on Twitter and de-friend them on Facebook.

#FAIL

2 approaches to AIDS awareness (graphic content)

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 04:39:00 +0000

Below are two TV adverts promoting condom use and AIDS awareness. Both take very different approaches, one humour and one graphic shock factor. Both make an excellent point in their own way.

Caution, one has very graphic content. NSFW - depending on where you work of course.

Durex ad - great comedy delivery:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQALeeHWJyE

German TV ad:
http://www.aids-ist-ein-massenmoerder.de/typo3/index.php?id=aids_kampagne&L=1

There have been some great examples of public awareness videos lately. I also recommend looking at this one teaching drivers to be aware of cyclists - click here.

Terrorism is just a word

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:14:00 +0000

Amazing video from the UK - 2 men, 2 megaphones and some very funny and also very valid points

The future ad placement will be invisible

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 00:14:00 +0000

One of the favourite parts of my job at iCrossing is looking at what's new in media and working out how to capitalize on it for our clients and how we remain out in front. What I have seen lately leads me to believe that the need for data will see the creation of the invisible ad placement appearing on media plans. A pixel purely designed for data harvesting.

It used to be very common for a media planner to ask the client for the demographic details of who they are targeting and simply plug this information into something like @plan. Often this would be supplemented with contextual info, i.e. shopping, travel, personal finance, but essentially the profile of the audience was the key criteria.

What about intent?
What about the buying cycle?
What about discussion or debate?
What about interactions between friends?

If a media planner ever comes to you with a plan based solely on demographic, geographic and socio-economic factors then get ready to ask lots of questions as to why they think it's the best use of your money. It has its place, but not like it used to.

Today we know so much more and it should be utilized. To give just one example, my team will commonly utilize the data of who is connected to who on the social sites, tapping into the theory of bird's of a feather flock together. This is data that wasn't available only 12 months ago.

We also use social tools to probe discussion and identify niche sites where decisions are being made based on recommendation. Our results say that is significantly better than demographic profiling.

And now we have the media exchanges.
Arguably the catalyst to a huge media revolution.
A fad and buzz phrase 2 years ago.
The facilitator of so much to come.

As a live transactional platform the exchanges allow us to bid in real time on every impression; sitting in a virtual auction house we can review a visitor's credentials and state our claim to be the ones to show them an ad. This allows for search, site and social retargeting all to exist.

Yahoo's Right Media is certainly transactional, DoubleClick seem to be on the right path, AdEcn we are still waiting. But the era is here. Exchanges allow media to be bought live, the value being set by the purchaser using the data that they have.

To be a shit hot media agency in 3 years time you have to be in the data game. You have to have your own secret sauce that means you make the right decision to raise your hand or not when you are sat in that auction house. Whether you build technology or partner with an existing platform, the decision has to come from somewhere.

So what data should you care about? I am seeing providers over the last few months that are doing every combination you can imagine, often without really knowing why. The consistent fact is no one has all the data, everyone needs to look at 3rd party sources. Combine this fact that we no longer care about aggregate audiences, but instead the individual who is expressing the intent, and we see the dependency on other sites grow.

So that's where the invisible ad unit comes into play. If have a bunch of potential buyers tagged through one partner but want to know which ones are most likely to convert now, I need to know where they are in the conversion funnel. I need to see what they are looking for and what they are being exposed to.

I need data.

So if I am selling the latest gizmo, wouldn't it be valuable for me to know what products they are looking at on a tech blog?
Or what they are bookmarking on Digg?
Or what they bought from Dell or Best Buy in the last 30 days?

I might not want to place the ad on those sites as the context is wrong, but I would happily pay to put my iCrossing pixel on the site to collect the data. Then when I am sat in the auction house wondering if to raise my hand, all I need to check is if they are they flagged with my "about to buy" pixel. If yes, I would pay a nice premium.

And the industry is starting to experiment. Travelocity are arguably the first out of the gate with a public product offering to run a search retargeting campaign out on the exchanges based on searches a visitor to their site did.

Make sure you understand that - Travelocity are not selling a unit on their site. Instead they are using their value as a major travel site and effectively selling that by facilitating a buy elsewhere.

So cool! We will see this more and more in the future, and the potential is huge.

One of my predictions from this is that some sites will make all their revenue from advertising without ever carrying an advert.

Twitter and Facebook, are you listening?

I want one in my house - 'nuff said!

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:55:00 +0000

This is awesome! Is in the Hard Rock Cafe in Vegas...

Media planners say yes to social sites for 2010 - but how much?

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:39:00 +0000

In an article published today by MediaPost, it was revealed that in response to a survey of media planners, more than 50% said they planned to include social media in their media plans next year. A good article and report, one worth reading.

Study Finds Social Nets 'Realistically' Near Top Of 2010 Media Buying Plans

This does not offer us any insight into the level of spend though - what media agency or brand buyer would not be looking to consider these types of properties, particularly when surveyed. Everyone is trying it out, testing the water and waiting to see what happens. This test and learn strategy should continue on social networks for some time to come.

At iCrossing for instance, we find for clients that sites such as Facebook will not deliver the goods consistently when the goal is ROI, but to support an on-network activity, such as a fan page, it can be the perfect place to put the client's message. We have known for sometime that visitors to social sites are there to read or to shout, rarely are they there to book a holiday or buy clothes.

Secondly, the type of spend is not defined.

Given that budgets in display have shifted from big brand spends to having an ROI performance goal, we need to go after the individuals with the intent, not just focus on the context. That surely excludes the social properties again from the strategy. They remain attractive though because of the data of individuals and the data of who is connected to who. If the goal is brand or awareness the numbers add up.

There are tools that utilize these valuable social interactions but then allow us to place the advertising in more relevant places, a technique known as social retargeting. This is a relatively new approach though and I wonder to what extent the respondents are aware of it and whether this type of advertising would be included.

And then there is the argument of what is social media spending anyway? I commonly see people getting confused between a social site and a social media program. The study leans heavily towards advertising on the social networks themselves, but could the respondents be thinking about a wider dip into social media overall?

There is another stat that is getting less attention from the report and that is the continuing growth of online versus traditional. for 2010 respondents reported 43% to traditional and 57% to non traditional.

What Americans need to hear about free health care

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:51:00 +0000

I am angry and dismayed by the media and their willingness to give the loudest voice to those who are against the proposed change to a free health care system in the US. I am reading so many stories that are simply not true, many of them putting down the British NHS (National Health Service).

Some of the latest writings describe a system under which the government plays God, deciding who lives and who dies. Whilst it may be true that under the NICE (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence) system not all newly developed treatments can be rolled out, but it is a careful balance rather than the murderous state the haters of reform are making it out to be.

I want to give an example of why the NHS is so wonderful, and why Americans need to talk to those people who live under such a system - find a Canadian if you can't find a Brit! They are only next door.

In the photo are Rebecca and Bailey, my twin daughters. This was taken back in June 2003 a few days after their birth. Let me explain those first few weeks to you.

On June 2nd a problem was discovered with the pregnancy, nothing too serious but Bailey (only known medically as T2 at the time) had not grown in 2 weeks and her bigger sister, T1, was leaching all the nutrients from her. There was also a knot in T2's umbilical cord and so an emergency c-section at 35 weeks was essential.

(Earlier in the pregnancy it was spotted that the girls were monoamniotic and monochorionic and so we had been having scans every 2 weeks. There are no charges for the doctors appointments, the scans or the follow-ups. Nothing.)

So late at night on June 2nd their mum was prepped for surgery. In attendance was a surgeon and his assistant, an anaesthetist and his assistant, a paediatrician for each twin, and 2 paediatric nurses for each twin - including their mum, me and girls, there were 14 people in that room at just after midnight.

Now it's true we had not met the surgeon before. Lindsey did not get to choose him or his team. And even if this was not an emergency she still would not have been able to choose the surgeon (although this is starting to happen more under the NHS). But this was an emergency, the guy seemed to know what he was doing and we were underway.

How many Americans in that situation - one of the most emotionally horrific hours of my life - would be having to calculate their copay, having to call an insurance company or worst still, wondering what their house was worth because it was going to get taken off them to help pay the bill.

All we had to care about until 01:19 AM was our girls. There were no costs to worry about, no bills to pay.

When they were born there were some minor complications, T1 had to be resuscitated. But both were treated on the spot, packed up into incubators and rushed down to SCBU (Special Care Baby Unit). After an hour I was allowed down to see them to find the 2 tiny things you can see in these photos. Again, I didn't have to worry about what treatments I could afford or not, all I had to do was sit there and watch as some of the world's best health care was going on around me for the sake of my kids.

They spent just over 4 weeks in total in the SCBU unit, and thankfully did not have any major problems. Other children were far worse off, and some sadly don't make it, but all were cared for to the best of that team's ability, and apart from always struggling to find vests small enough for premature babies, the team did not lack the equipment or training they needed.

And what did it cost us when we finally got to take them home? A lot of grey hair, a box of chocolates, some flowers and a donation of 30 premature baby vests.

That's it! There was no worrying when we got home that bills were going to start flooding through the letterbox, that we were going to lose our house or that we would have to compromise on their treatment. In fact the hospital proactively sent someone every week for a while to check on the progress.

Free.

Within the context of health care, FREE is the most powerful word. Free means you do not need to compromise. Free means everyone can go get help when they have chest pains in the middle of the night instead of worrying about their insurance, free means that lump will actually get checked. Free means less people die.

I would never claim the NHS is perfect. It is a complex system catering to 60 million people. It is internally political, it is sometimes mis-managed and there will always be horror stories of when the system fails.

But if I can give you just this one story to try and balance the utter garbage that the US media is feeding you with then job done.

I have 3 girls who are all alive today thanks to the NHS. How is that a bad thing?

German RTL TV station behind fake MJ video

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:17:00 +0000

As a society we do seem to love a good conspiracy theory, and something as big as Michael Jackson's death was inevitably going to be followed by some interesting ideas. As it turns out though, his death has had enough mystery of its own as to limit the crazies from claiming he died from an overzealous alien anal probe. (If you haven't heard it then check our Newton Faulkner's "UFO" tune - tongue in cheek song about being kidnapped by aliens!)

One video that did the rounds soon after MJ's passing though was of him climbing out the back of the corner's van alive and well. The source remained a mystery until recently when RTL, a German TV station, admitted they were the source, and that it was an 'experiment'.

It has had over 1.2m views and almost 5,000 comment on YouTube alone - the best comment goes to "TheBibs" for saying "Quick!! Reverse!! Reverse!!"

RTL now say they have taken the video down, but let's be honest, a video can not be taken down from the Internet. Once its out, its out. And I am sure that's what RTL wanted. Credit to them, it was a bit of fun and interesting to see how it spread around the world. What's also worth noting is how fast people created their own content to prove it was a fake - check out this video response which includes samples of comments including a 10 yr old girl asking people not to hate Germans because of RTL!

Google allows other networks to bid for their inventory

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 22:42:00 +0000

In an article written by Kate Kaye over at ClickZ last week, it was discussed that Google is opening up its AdSense inventory to other networks.

For those of you who aren't aware, Google has one of the world's largest display media networks in addition to its search offering. Within a search campaign a marketer can choose to run their SEM ads on 3rd party sites in the program, and this option is also available for display ads.

The move to allow other networks access to its display inventory will benefit site owners as there are now more buyers of their ad space in the marketplace and therefore they will sell more of their inventory and potentially at a higher price. Natural economics of an auction environment should apply.

On the Google AdSense blog, Google say that the roll out to other networks will be gradual and so no major changes should be seen in the near term, and that they certify the selected networks abide by their rules on privacy. This model means Google maintains a level of control over the quality and context of the ads that run on their AdSense customer's websites.

For me it seems like a logical step towards completing the integration of the Doubleclick assets into the Google family. Opening up AdSense to other networks makes it behave like a media network and may be an indicator that AdSense and the Dart Exchange will be one and the same in the future. The addition of radio, TV and digital billboard inventory will surely follow after.

SEM and display continue to move closer together and can only be optimized successfully when done so in unison, the ability to have one platform to bid on for all types of digital media will allow the media planner of the future to act like a stock broker, moving money second by second to the place where the return of investment is greatest.

Research paper and podcast: Effects of display media on search traffic

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:02:00 +0000

It's been a very busy few months for the Performance Display team at iCrossing. Our latest publication discusses the effects of display media on search traffic.

It has frustrated me that there have been so many papers published by the likes of Atlas, DoubleClick et al that suggest display + search is a 1+1=3 model, but fail to really explain the inner workings of why this is the case. We know display has a halo effect on all other channels, and we know that if you put your brand benefits in front of someone who subsequently searches that you can modify that search behaviour - but does that really explain the goings on?

In addition to the research paper, Kaylan Malm and I have recorded a podcast as a quick way for you to digest our findings - click here to listen, or click here to watch the slide presentation with our audio.

Performance Display is all about campaigns with a ROI goal, and that by focusing on the intent of an individual (I want a hotel in San Francisco) rather than simply a context (I am visiting a travel website) then you eliminate wastage from the plan and drive up the return.

My new chosen career - tortoise tapping!

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:25:00 +0000

I was with the kids in a snake farm of all places in South Africa at a place called Hartebeespoort Dam. Was fasctinated to watch how they use high tech tools such as brooms and rakes to get 15 giant tortoise out to eat in the morning!

4 of the best sites to take a break with

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 23:56:00 +0000

Sometimes we all need a little break from work, here are 4 amazing sites that colleagues just chared with me:

AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com
See above!

ThisIsWhyYoureFat.com
Inspired!

FMyLife.coom
"Today, after my girlfriend of 2 years left me for another guy, I got stuck in an elevator for 3 hours. With both of them. FML

"Today, I went on a date with a girl. She drove while texting someone then stopped at a house and told me to wait in the car. She left her phone so I looked at the last text and it says "I'm here for the quicky". Our "date" was a decoy to throw her mom off so she could have sex with another guy. FML"

And my favourite site of the day...

TextsFromLastNight.com
"DUDE. I'm missing my big toenail. My bed has blood all over it. WHAT DID WE DO LAST NIGHT?"

"I don't know, but I chipped my tooth and I'm wearing different underwear."

"Dude someone changed all the contacts in my phone to I Like Eggs"

Michael Jackson Thriller (mini) flash mob

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 18:22:00 +0000

I was out and about being a tourist this weekend in San Francisco when I caught this (mini) flash mob at the cable car turnaround doing a tribute to Michael Jackson - wicked!

39% of the way to the moon

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:26:00 +0000

I use a service called Dopplr to track my journies and share them with friends and colleagues, the idea being that my travels might overlap with those folks and we can make contact.

In 18 months this has never happened!

However, what is very cool is the bi-annual personal travel report that they send you showing where you have been and how long for.

My headlines for the first half of 2009 are:

100 days at home / 81 days on the road
16 trips, most common being South Africa
Travelled 39% of the distance to the moon!

I apparently didn't switch on the carbon feature and so it wasn't calculated, but I am guessing it's the size of a Yeti! Sorry environment.

A very bad day at Phorm HQ as BT cancel trials

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 23:46:00 +0000

For a technology company days don't get much worse than those Monday's where your main route to market decides not to work with you any more! BT (British Telecom) has decided not to continue its work with Phorm, thus starving Phorm of its major route to the UK market.

I have been very vocal about Phorm, an ad network still to get up and running, but one that showed so much promise. The basic idea behind their technology is to monitor anonymous Internet packet traffic at the ISP level giving them sight of all your behaviour, thus being able to serve you the most relevant ads.

Targeting exists within advertising whether consumers know it or not, and Phorm actually stores less data than a regular ad-server.

However, amongst what I personally think is a catalogue of errors, Phorm did not address the balance between consumer reward (for opting in) against its own revenue potential. Consumers are smart and know a bad deal when they see it - downloading some free anti-virus/firewall type stuff is not a good deal in exchange for the millions Phorm will make from their own behaviours.

In the NY Times article that reported the news, BT claim they are not doing this because of privacy, but instead it has become a lower priority.

Whichever one of these you believe it comes down to that fact that BT don't think the potential return from this model is worth all the hassle, which may or may not include dealing with angry consumer groups.

The person who sent me the article originally used the subject line of "wah wah, buh bye phorm" and I wonder if this is such a major blow that they will indeed disappear. A 40% stock reduction signifies that they will have to evolve their story and fast in order to survive the media targeting world.

Good conference call entertainment

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:04:00 +0000

Not really a game player, but when it's this addictive... Click to become an addict and to pass time during long conference calls.

Brilliant video on client / vendor relationships

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 20:26:00 +0000

We've got the measure of this campaign

noreply@blogger.com (Dax Hamman) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 23:15:00 +0000

I had the pleasure last night of seeing my first major league ball game, the Red Sox at Fenway Park. They have been on a huge winning streak and have had 500 home game sellouts in a row.

The marketers of the Red Sox sponsors have of course noticed and there were at least 5 or 6 giveaways of anything from pizza tokens to discount gasoline cards. Our area of the stadium lucked out (?) and got 200 Stanley 'Fat Max' measuring tapes (!!).

These photos are the result, the effect was amazing. Within seconds someone had the idea of winding it out and waving it about, and 199 people followed suit.

I have no idea if Stanley planned this, but it certainly created a spontaneous spectacle.

The organisers certainly didn't consider it though, and spent the next 30 minutes telling us off, and eventually called the police up to our section to stare menacingly at us.

It just goes to show that if you work with your fans and give them the tools, it is often them who will come up with the coolest things to do with them. Now, we just need to work out how we would measure its success ;-)