Adweek : Technology

Turner Embraces Social TV, Interactive Ads via 'Conan' App

Mike Shields — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 01:03:35 +0000

Starting on Monday, Coco’s getting his own app. And like the Harvard educated funnyman, this app’s going to be pretty clever.

As part of a major push by Turner’s entertainment networks to embrace second-screen viewing and smart TVs, TBS is planning to introduce complementary content and eventually ad messages to a slew of its shows, starting with a tablet app designed to be accessed during episodes of TBS’ Conan.

Using audio recognition technology similar to that employed by the popular smartphone app Shazam, each episode of Conan will be fingerprinted. As a result, users of the new Conan app (which is being sponsored by AT&T) will be periodically greeted with pop-ups within the app featuring information relevant to the show, such as facts about a guest’s movie career.

And soon enough, viewers will be able to buy tickets to those guests’ movies via the app. At a mini conference centered on media convergence held at the Time Warner Center in New York on Monday, Turner executives showed a mock-up of potential Conan commerce integration. During a demo clip, as actress Ellie Kemper of Bridesmaids sat down with host Conan O'Brien, viewers were prompted to purchase tickets to the movie via the Conan app.

The Bridesmaids example was theoretical, but Dennis Adamovich, Turner’s svp of brand and digital activation, said that such ad integrations would be available during the upcoming TV upfront. So will Turner’s new daily deals offerings. Starting this April, viewers watching shows like TBS staple Everybody Loves Raymond will start seeing daily offers pop up on the bottom of their screen—provided they are one of the first to purchase a new line of smart/connected TVs from Vizio and other manufacturers.

TBS and TNT also plan to start building ads into its companion apps for The Big Bang Theory and Leverage tied to TV spots airing during those shows. For example, ads for advertisers like Twizzlers or Little Caesars could prompt viewers to provide their email address or phone number via the companion app to receive a quick coupon.

Clearly, Turner is looking to establish itself as a leader in adopting smart TV technology, and particularly ads that leverage audio fingerprinting. “We think this is a transformative technology,” said Adamovich. “We think this is going to redefine how viewers watch and interact with TV.” For now, that interaction requires viewers to do so via an app. But nearly all of the examples Turner presented on Wednesday could be ported to the TV screen itself, once enough smart TVs are installed, offered Adamovich.

There's little question that social TV as well as companion tablet viewing are taking off among consumers. However, it remains to be seen how many Americans are ready, or even know about the promise of connected TVs. And there’s also the risk of couponing TV viewers to death—and turning the ultimate branding vehicle into a banner-ad-filled direct response medium.

But credit Turner for trying to learn, and lead. That was pretty much the point of Wednesday's event, the second of three planned conferences featuring buyers, sales executives and industry luminaries. “We are trying to understand the consumer marketplace,” said David Levy, TBS’ president of sales, distribution and sports. “People react to advertising differently on different screens, and we’re trying to figure out, ‘What is the next evolution of TV everywhere?’ and ‘Do you sell it differently?’ We’re learning with our partners. After all, I’m a brand, too.”

Among the speakers on the docket helping Turner and its guest learn was noted author, journalist and NYU professor Clay Shirky, who warned the TV business to avoid ending up like the music business—which for too long fixated on things like audio quality and ignored its customers’ desire to have more control of their music buying experience. Shirky noted that TV might be headed down the same path, pushing 3-D TVs when few consumers seem interested, while still making it difficult for users to find comprehensive, on-demand programing choices. “People don’t want to hear about things like rights windows,” he said.

Shirky also urged TV executives to stop treating its viewers all the same. The 3,000 plus viewers who have contributed to the “Dr. Who” Wikipedia page are a different breed of super-engaged fans—and TV networks should cater to them (though Shirky neglected to say exactly how). “Mass is different than passion,” Shirky said. “All women 25-54 are not interchangeable. … [On the Web] you can’t make your most passionate viewers shut up. People love to talk to each other [about TV]. You should build an ecosystem that recognizes this.”

Privacy Group Sues to Stop Google's New Privacy Plan

Katy Bachman — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 22:55:57 +0000

Google just can't catch a break with its new privacy policy. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, a relentless critic of Google filed Wednesday with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to compel the Federal Trade Commission to stop Google from implementing its new privacy policy, set to go into effect March 1.

EPIC is asking the court to issue a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction requiring the Federal Trade Commission to enforce its October 2011 consent order with Google over Google Buzz social network.

"The FTC has a non-discretionary obligation to enforce a final order. But the agency has thus far failed to take any action regarding this matter, placing the privacy interests of literally hundreds of millions Internet users at grave risk," EPIC said in its court filing. EPIC filed the original complaint with the FTC that let to the settlement.

In the complaint, EPIC argues that the changes Google is making to its privacy policy, such as sharing data about its users across its platforms and services, violate the terms of its FTC settlement requiring the company to maintain a comprehensive privacy program, not misrepresent privacy practices and use opt-in consent if there is a change in how Google shares personal information with third parties.

"Google violated Part I(a) of the Consent Order by misrepresenting the extent to which it maintains and protects the privacy and confidentiality of covered information. Google also violated Part I(b) of the Consent Order by misrepresenting the extent to which it complies with the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Framework. Google violated Part II of the Consent Order by failing to obtain affirmative consent from users prior to sharing their information with third parties. Google violated Part III of the Consent Order by failing to comply with the requirements of a comprehensive privacy program," EPIC said in its filing.

In an emailed statement, a Google spokesman said the company takes privacy very seriously. "We're happy to engage in constructive conversations about our update privacy policy but EPIC is wrong on the facts and the law," he said. "We're keeping private information private, we're not changing how any personal information is shared outside Google. We've created a world-class privacy compliance program, as we're confident our third-party assessments will demonstrate."

Although the case will likely stir more debate over Google's privacy policy, some privacy attorneys doubt EPIC's legal action against Google will amount to much. "Google's policies should be vetted, but this particular legal action isn't very likely to succeed," said Amy Mushahwar, a data and privacy attorney with Reed Smith.

"There's isn't a clear compelling case that a specific individual or groups of individuals will suffer irreparable harm. Customers can walk with their feet."

Since Google announced the new privacy policy Jan. 25, it has been defending it, to privacy hawks in Congress, and to the E.U., which has asked Google to delay the launch of the new policy until it understands it better.

Smaller Carriers Worry Big Two Will Dominate Spectrum Auctions

Katy Bachman — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:37:05 +0000

Fearing that AT&T and Verizon will gobble up the entire wireless spectrum in an auction, a group of competitors sent a letter to the Congressional Conference Committee considering spectrum auction legislation as one of the "pay-fors" in the payroll tax cut extension.

Like all wireless carriers, the eight companies that wrote the letter Wednesday, including Sprint and T-Mobile, are anxious for Congress to pass legislation that would authorize spectrum auctions to meet the growing demand for wireless services. But language in the House bill under consideration by the conference committee would prevent the Federal Communications Commission from determining which companies are eligible to participate in the auctions.

"Stripping the FCC of its auction design discretion would disserve the public interest by permitting unchecked participation by the two largest, best-funded wireless carriers in future spectrum auctions," the letter noted. "That would discourage smaller competitors from participating in future auctions, thereby reducing auction revenues and limiting wireless competition and innovation."

The FCC language in the Jumpstarting Opportunity With Broadband (JOBS) Act has become a flash point in the spectrum debate ever since FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said last month that limiting the FCC's flexibility would be a "mistake," prompting AT&T to charge that the commission just wanted to "pick winners and losers."

Author of the JOBS Act, Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), who also sits on the conference committee, responded that the bill doesn't limit the FCC's authority because following an auction, it retains its regulatory authority to force divestitures if a company is too big. "The only reason I can think of for why the chairman is upset...is because he wants to exclude one of the big carriers from participating in the auction," Walden said at a recent press briefing.

Amazon Licenses Loads of Viacom Content

Sam Thielman — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 17:04:38 +0000

Hot on the heels of Verizon's announcement that it too would be entering the streaming content wars, Amazon has added a large library of Viacom content to its $79-per-year subscription VOD service, Amazon Prime. Amazon will now stream MTV series including Jersey Shore, several seasons' worth of The Real World, and shows from Comedy Central and Nickelodeon including Chappelle's Show and SpongeBob SquarePants.

The two companies have been in something of an arms race for several months, with both inking deals with Disney-ABC TV in October.

Netflix has a few advantages in this fight yet. Amazon's access to Viacom content is less extensive than Netflix's, and Netflix has an exclusive window on SpongeBob for two more recent seasons than Amazon (Netflix has 1-5, Amazon has 1-3). A source described the deal with Amazon as "a subset" of what Viacom provides for Netflix, though because of shifting trends, there will be some Viacom shows exclusive to both parties...at least until the next deal is struck.

Viacom reported a 3 percent drop in ad sales at its cable TV unit last week, largely due to declines at the cable division's crown jewel, Nickelodeon. On the company's earnings call, CEO Philippe Dauman addressed the theories of equity analysts that Netflix's ad-free Nick content was cannibalizing the kid cabler's viewership.

Dauman roundly dismissed the suggestion, but the debate continues. With Amazon now jockeying for viewers alongside Netflix, it's not clear what, if any, the fledgling streaming industry's impact will be on traditional cable.

Interestingly, among shows not included in the deal are two of Comedy Central's biggest series: The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. The comedy news shows, which keep track of current affairs, have been Hulu-exclusive thus far, but as more companies look for ways to distinguish themselves from the competition, especially by grabbing earlier windows on premium shows, library content is likely to take a backseat to more timely material.

Regardless of the scope of the content provided, Amazon is taking advantage of the publicity to push the Kindle. The company's new tablet device is being sold below cost to consumers, and the e-tailer is undoubtedly anxious to prove value by acquiring as many cost-defraying subscriptions as possible.

Targeting the Tone Deaf

Ki Mae Heussner — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 02:35:39 +0000

Let’s be honest. Lyrics websites haven’t exactly enjoyed the best reputation. Between in-your-face banner ads, aggressive ringtone offers and often artless aesthetic—not to mention their murky copyright infringement issues—they don’t exactly evoke “premium.” But that’s exactly what some companies hope they can be, and not without reason: People seriously love lyrics. According to Google, only the word “Facebook” has generated more searches than “lyrics” in the U.S. since 2004.

Aiming to capitalize on this, ringtone marketer ToneFuse last week launched ToneMedia, a new ad platform for lyrics and music content sites, such as lyrics007.com. Val Katayev, ToneFuse’s founder, CEO, said when he entered the lyrics business he saw “a huge opportunity there.”

By pairing information about music preferences (from ToneFuse’s ringtone product) with third-party data, the company says it has created 900 audience segments to help brands target consumers across some 100 publishers. The result is a slew of odd, nonintuitive insights. John Lennon fans, for instance, are 101 percent more likely to own pets while Rihanna lovers are 189 percent more likely to be interested in cruises.

When asked about copyright issues, the company said most of its publishing partners are licensed or becoming so. Katayev says before officially launching ToneMedia, its client roster included Dove and Axe. The company declined to have the brands speak with Adweek.

David Goodman, president of CBS Interactive Music Group (which bought MetroLyrics last October and has a strategic partnership with ToneFuse), said that as companies like his look to elevate the lyric sites space, brands are starting to recognize their impact. “Lyrics are a premium content experience,” he said.

But David Cohen, Universal McCann’s evp, global digital officer, says lyric sites often generate in-and-out traffic, indicating poor engagement.

Ilan Zechory, co-founder of the popular Wikipedia-like lyrics site Rap Genius, said lyric sites hoping to attract brands need communities. If you’re just displaying lyrics, there’s a ceiling to how…classy an ad space you can have,” he said. “But if you’re doing something with deep levels of engagement, then it’s absolutely a very attractive place to be.”

Neil Cavuto Wants Your Business

D.M. Levine — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 11:29:36 +0000

Neil Cavuto is in a unique position. As senior vice president for Fox News Channel and its ratings-challenged sibling network, Fox Business Network, Cavuto is in a position to see just how the two networks differ in their goals and tone. Adweek caught up with Cavuto to talk about those differences and why people should choose Fox Business over its rivals.

Adweek: How do you compare your role at Fox Business News with your work for Fox News Channel?
We’re not really red or blue about it; we’re green. We follow the money. We follow it as we did under President Bush and the bailouts. We were, early on, very critical of those, looking at all sides. The promises that couldn’t possibly be realized in the middle of a meltdown. And we continued that with this administration.

What do you think about your competitors’ business coverage?
They can talk the talk, but they can’t walk the walk. If you’re going to be Bloomberg or CNBC and sponsor a presidential debate and you’re not even going to stay up late to give the Iowa caucus results or commit yourself nonstop to South Carolina or cover a debt downgrade post the market hours, either with the United States last summer or much of Europe, and still say you’re all business all the time, you’re lying through your teeth. We may be young and in half the homes and the upstart, but we know what we are.

What is that exactly?
I have a cardinal rule with my staff: We don’t use jargon. We don’t use acronyms. We don’t assume the audience has this down pat. We don’t try to check with our banker and broker contacts [to see] whether an interview impressed them. I’d sooner make an inroad with my mother-in-law. The rap against business journalists is that we deliberately try to sound like the smartest kid in the class. I can tell you, I was not. FBN is like a business field of dreams. If you build it, they will come. I’m not smart enough to know when they will come. I’m waiting. But I’m impressed by the results we’ve seen.

Is there room for the same kind of voice Fox News Channel carved out for itself in the world business reporting?
I just finished reading Isaacson’s book on Steve Jobs. I think it’s fair to say that Steve was not a fan of Fox. But one of the things I admired about him was, he came up with the campaign, “Be Different.” And one of the edicts I had when I first came here from CNBC was, I was competing against my old friends and colleagues. So my mantra was then, whatever CNBC is doing, don’t. Whatever they’re leading with, don’t.

What about the ratings? They haven’t been stellar.
The fact of the matter is, we’re barely four years into this. You gotta keep in mind that [our] competitors have been doing this close to a quarter of a century. I remember Fox News starting out with the same feeling. I don’t know what the magic moment will be, but I do know that when people have been exposed to Fox Business, invariably, they’re drawn to us. They come to us.

So the reason to come to Fox Business rather than stay with CNBC is what?
We’re interesting. They’re boring. And they look like they’re having a miserable time. You look at our people—they’re engaged, they know they’re in an uphill battle, but they really feel confident they can do it. I remember that feeling distinctly in the early days of Fox News. It’s déjà vu all over again.

The Internet Identity Crisis

Ki Mae Heussner — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:13:32 +0000

In 1971, journalist Don Hoefler coined the name Silicon Valley. And just like every other 40-year-old Gen Xer, Silicon Valley is now having an identity crisis—about identity no less. The question: How should people name themselves online?

For Facebook and Google, as well as other sites with real-name policies, the mandate is real names should be used online, and they should follow us across the Web. Out in the world, after all, names turn strangers into acquaintances and friends, and (mostly) hold us accountable for our actions. It’s why we wear name tags at conferences and news articles carry bylines.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made this policy a central tenet of his company, positioning himself, no less, on moral grounds. “Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity,” Zuckerberg told The Facebook Effect author David Kirkpatrick. “The days of you having a different image for your work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to an end pretty quickly.”

On the other side are those who believe real names can deny users freedom of expression and limit individual liberties. At the extreme, they say, it puts political activists, marginalized communities, abuse survivors and others at great risk.

Arguing that Facebook and Google “do identity wrong,” Christopher Poole, founder of anonymous message board 4Chan and image-sharing site Canvas, said at a conference last fall that “identity is prismatic. There are many lenses through which people view you. … Google and Facebook would have you believe that you’re a mirror, [but] in fact, we’re more like diamonds.”

The debate between real names and pseudonyms—known as the “nymwars”—came to a head last summer when Google+ launched with a real name policy and suspended accounts for those who didn’t fall in line. Then, last fall, Facebook and Salman Rushdie came to blows when the company changed the name of his profile page to the name on his passport. (Facebook reversed course. Who wants a public brawl about identity with an award-winning writer who went into hiding with a fatwa on his head? But the company didn’t make any policy changes as a result.)
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The topic has heated up again thanks to muddy changes Google+ made for account holders last month: It now accepts some pseudonyms on its site.

But as the arguments continue to make headlines and blog posts, an important issue for marketers is often overlooked: Are real names better for online advertising?

Before Facebook, pseudonyms were the status quo. They still exist in significant pockets of the Web—among hackers, gamers, health-related message boards and other communities—but, largely thanks to Zuckerberg, hundreds of millions of people who use the social Web now do so with their real names. (It’s enough, the company believes, that users can deliver different messages to different audiences, an option recently automated.) Hundreds of publishers have adopted Facebook Connect as their default logins.

With personal data a growing, multi-billion dollar business—$2 billion annually in third-party data alone, according to Forrester Research—a well-maintained dataset, with real names and demographics, is highly coveted. Advertisers, it’s believed, are better served if they can cement one person to one name. After all, real names have been a gold mine for the direct mail business for a decade.

They also help marketers track every targeted penny and let them know, says eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson, the size of the audience they’re reaching. When Twitter—firmly in the no-real-names-needed camp—shares its number of users, she notes, it doesn’t disclose the number of people, because multiple accounts are allowed.

It’s also important, Williamson says, for customer relationship management, and mapping customers across different marketing touch points, which otherwise could be a “data nightmare.”

Some also argue anonymity breeds abuse. “People behave a lot better when they have their real names down,” said Facebook’s former marketing director (and Mark Zuckerberg’s sister), Randi Zuckerberg.

If Facebook were to back away from its policy, it would “absolutely” be less valuable to marketers, says Clara Shih, CEO of social media management company Hearsay Social. It “has been transformational for the online experience and, secondarily, for marketers,” she says. “Marketers work with an authentic community and that authentic community comes from having real names.”
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Real names, Shih adds, are also a prerequisite for social graphs. And that is arguably the cornerstone of Facebook’s “word-of-mouth-at-scale” grand plan, and the reason the site can offer sponsored stories with friends’ de facto recommendations.

“Transparency across many dimensions is truly important in the relationship between consumers and marketers,” says David Cohen, evp, global digital officer for Universal McCann. “The idea of hiding behind a pseudonym is the antithesis of transparency.”

Google+ was built on real names as well. But when it launched, its policy resulting in the suspension of fake name accounts set off a fury of negative articles, tweets and posts on Google+ itself. In fact, a website, my.nameis.me, was created as a forum where people could register their complaints. The company had believed, said Google engineering svp Vic Gundotra, at a conference this past fall, that fake names (like “Captain Crunch” and “dog fart,” to name two he mentioned), would “change the atmosphere of the product.”

As it turned out, not so much. Two weeks ago, when Google+ massaged its common names policy, Yonatan Zunger, chief architect of Google+, said on his Google+ profile that “we thought … people would behave very differently when they were and weren’t going by their real names. After watching the system for a while, we realized that this was not, in fact, the case. (And in particular, bastards are still bastards under their own names.)”

The new policy, however—Google+ now accepts nicknames, and pseudonyms with a “meaningful following”—has enough shades of gray that advocacy groups aren’t sure what to make of it. Electronic Frontier Foundation activist Eva Galperin, for one, says it’s a positive, but “we were really hoping for more.”

As Google moves to link properties and leverage Google Wallet and Checkout, it may view the emphasis on real names as a hedge for future opportunities as a seller of data or other roles, says David Rogers, author of The Network Is Your Customer, who teaches digital marketing at Columbia Business School. (In fact, just this past month, Google adopted a new privacy policy limiting users’ ability to opt out of data sharing between its properties.) But, in the current environment, he says, the value of real names is “far from proven.”

Recent data from commenting network Disqus, for instance, suggests that people who use pseudonyms post more comments, and of higher quality. Sixty-one percent of comments made with pseudonyms were positive, for instance, compared to 51 percent from people who used real names.

Indeed, some industry leaders feel real names are not crucial to a brand’s bottom line. At an event in September, Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter—which prohibits impersonation, but permits parody, fan and other accounts that use fake names—reportedly said, “Other services may be declaring that you have to use your real name because they think they’ll be able to monetize that better. … We’re more interested in serving our users first, and we think by [doing this], we’ll have a better platform for marketers and advertisers.”

Also, some believe while real names may make it easier for friends to find friends, online, just as in real life, people organize around shared interests and concerns. Those connections can easily be made with pseudonyms.

“The actual identity is much less important to me than the set of data that represents what they’re doing,” adds Roland Smart, senior director of product marketing for Involver. “It’s that set of data that I’m going to use to deliver relevant content to that user.”

Matt Rednor, vp of strategy for social media agency Mr. Youth, notes that the whole point of the Internet is to help people connect around shared interests, and to share opinions in ways they weren’t able to before. And “pseudonyms, especially from a marketing standpoint,” he says, “allow people to have more honest conversations about brands. Ultimately, that’s what we care about.”

Todd Steinman, CEO of social media marketing agency M80, says while marketers may believe that fake names contribute to lower quality comments on sites like YouTube, that dynamic changes as the topics become more weighty. “I think certain brands [like a pharmaceutical product line] understand that … you’re going to have a lot more legitimate, authentic discourse when you have profiles that [allow fake] names,” he says.

In addition, a study last summer from Internet company Meebo notes most people don’t even want a real (or known) name when looking for advice. For online recommendations, the company said expert strangers trump friends: 53 percent of people surveyed looked for recommendations from “everyday experts” with knowledge on a specific topic. For information on specific hobbies or interests, 39 percent would seek the recommendations of strangers, compared to 28 percent who would turn to friends or acquaintances. For questions about travel and cooking, the gap is even wider: about 40 percent said they would connect with “everyday experts” while about 20 percent would ask people they know.

“Your first and last name is on your credit card,” says Federated Media CEO Deanna Brown. “[They’re] on your birth certificate. But they’re not necessarily your currency in a kind of conversational or branded world.” As social media increasingly allows people to become brands—and brand influencers—themselves, she says, she sees brands warming to consumers with digital clout who prefer to use alternate identities online.

In addition, a cottage industry of online targeting firms has emerged in which most bend over backwards to prove they never use real names in their ad targeting—just cookies—lest they feel the wrath of regulators.

Universal McCann’s Cohen acknowledges that pseudonyms can be used for a variety of reasons. “It’s not one size fits all,” he says. “There’s the use of pseudonyms to mask behavior that we wouldn’t condone in the world of marketing and the use of masking that’s simply another personification of your persona, along the lines of interests and passions.” The latter, he says, could create additional consumer insights.

Facebook may have a social graph that says, “This is who I am,” adds Columbia Business School’s Rogers, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into an interest graph that says, “This is what I like.” The future of the Web is a combination of the two, he argues, but until then interest graphs built by sites like Twitter, Amazon and Netflix—that don’t rely on real names—can be just as valuable as a social graph.

“Profiles are still profiles,” adds Jordan Bitterman, svp and social marketing practice director at Digitas. “You can say you’re one thing, but the actions that you undertake as that profile are actually even more important than your identity.”

Facebook and Google+, it seems, take a different view. Perhaps that’s because their angst about how users should identify themselves is really more about what the services themselves want to be online. Both services like to tell users they’re about sharing. Increasingly, however, as both companies ramp up commerce capabilities and strengthen their presence across the Internet, it’s clear they also want to be about identifying and authenticating their data pool. The risk? If they’re not careful, what they gain in identification they could lose in expression.

Disclosure: This reporter is married to an employee of Disqus.

First Mover: Simon Fleming-Wood

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:12:23 +0000

Specs
Who Simon Fleming-Wood
Age 43
New gig CMO, Pandora
Old gig Founding vp of marketing, Pure Digital Technologies

Pandora is 10 years old, but you’re its first chief marketing officer. Why was the position created now?
I think Pandora hired me partly because they’ve grown so significantly that it makes sense for someone to come in and be the shepherd of the brand and build in even more disciplined approaches. That’s both in terms of how we approach new customer acquisition as well as maintaining and growing what we call “listening intensity.”

Listening intensity?
It refers to the way we compete for greater share of somebody’s music listening requirements, so to speak.

How will you use branding to differentiate from new competitors like Spotify and iHeartRadio? Or will the selling point merely be, “We’re the biggest”?
No, the beauty is in the fact that it is so inherently differentiated based on its focus on personalization. You come and you tell us a little bit of information about what you like and this sort of magic thing happens. Nobody else has the magic thing that we have, which is the Music Genome Project. Ten years of work have gone into building this hand-built database of musicological DNA that allows people on the fly wherever they are to find music that they love. That is the differentiation.

So what’s your vision for the brand?
What makes Pandora so interesting to me personally—most recently I was on the founding team of Pure Digital Technologies, which was the creator of Flip Video, so I was the architect of that brand …

That was a great brand.
It still is! It was the James Dean of brands—it went out in its prime. So I get interested in technologies that reinvent categories. In that world, Flip Video sort of reinvented consumer video for people by making it simple, and then the Flip brand became what was new in video. We branded that difference. Pandora to me is the same opportunity as it relates to radio. There’s a tired old category, and Pandora has come along to reinvent that through this concept of personalized radio. In that world lies the opportunity to create a very rich brand around personalization.

For a while, Pandora had positioned itself as an underdog in its conflicts with the music labels. That “Save Pandora” rallying cry gave the brand a more mainstream awareness. Is that an image the company continues to embrace?
I think one of the brand attributes for Pandora is that, even though it now has over 125 million registered users, people still have this personal association with it, and in some ways, it’s still like a secret. I don’t want, from a brand perspective, to ignore that. I think that’s cool. But do we see ourselves as adversarial with the other players in the music industry, and is that part of our way of hyping the brand? Absolutely not. We feel that we are an important part of a healthy music industry. We pay royalties to artists. We pay much higher royalties than traditional radio does.

What’s your favorite station on Pandora?
I’m a Canadian boy, so my current favorite station is The Tragically Hip Radio. It brings up a lot of Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots and mellow stuff.

In the office, do you all fight over which station is played?
It’s a lot of people on headphones.

Has Social Media Made Search-Driven Publishing Less Relevant?

Mike Shields — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:08:32 +0000

The growing importance of social media, coupled with the powerful wrath of Google, have shaken the once-hot world of cheap search-driven publishing.

About.com recently dumped its CEO. Yahoo’s $100 million acquisition of Associated Content (now Yahoo Voices) has yielded a network of 700,000 freelancers who produce secondary content on sites like Yahoo Sports and OMG, but advertisers say they haven’t heard about it in more than a year.

Meanwhile, AOL’s Seed project is essentially in limbo. In fact, visitors to Seed.com are currently greeted with the message "We are in the process of reformatting Seed.com and new assignments are currently on hold." In a statement, AOL said it has reduced the number of Seed freelancers “as we evaluate how best to integrate its strengths within [the company].”

And then there’s Demand Media, which pioneered the practice of churning out thousands of articles based on Google search data. Last week, three of Demand’s founders exited, a year after its underwhelming IPO. Its signature property, eHow.com, is still massive (around 50 million unique users) but has lost about 10 million users since Google adjusted its algorithm to weed out low-quality content. Demand has very publicly pivoted to celebrity-centric content and splashier design to attract advertisers. Typef.com, a site built around Tyra Banks, is just building its audience, while Livestrong.com, a health site backed by Lance Armstrong, has seen traffic climb by 19 percent over the past year.

Still, Facebook and Twitter likely have more to do with the category’s decline than Google. Wetpaint and BuzzFeed are among a new breed of publishers mastering the creation of highly shareable content. Wetpaint COO Rob Grady estimated that while search still matters, Facebook alone accounts for 35 percent of visits. Social readers, he said, are 2.5 times more valuable than search-driven readers in time spent and frequency.

“The value of the search user is declining,” said Grady. That’s why Demand is touting its socially infused programs for brands like Kraft and the growth of its social media-friendly humor site, Cracked (5.5 million users).

“We believe that driving active media consumption on Facebook requires creating content in a different way than YouTube or search,” said Joanne Bradford, Demand’s chief revenue officer. “While our eHow content is mostly discovered via search, our Cracked content is discovered through sharing via social. Content has to be created for more than a website; it needs to be created for a multi-platform world.”

However, it's important to keep the shift away from a search-centric Web to a social one in perspective. A new report from Citigroup Investment Research's managing director Mark Mahaney found that in 2010 and 2011, Google delivered 17 percent of all the traffic to the top 30 Websites. By this year that number was down to 16 percent. "That’s slippage, but at a glacial pace," wrote Mahaney.

Agencies have never been as hung up on the way companies like Demand produced content, i.e. using lots of low paid freelancers. But they haven't necessarily viewed their sites as premium either -- Demand's selling point seemed to be it low ad rates. Molly Sugarman, Horizon Media’s director of digital media innovation, said her team rarely works with Demand since it’s seen as an outlet for direct-response brands—not where a so-called premium publisher wants to be.

Sugarman praised Demand for partnering with the likes of Tyra Banks on more ad-friendly sites such as typeF.com. “I was surprised the founders left, just when Demand was headed down the right path,” she said. “Everyone has realized it’s more about quality.”

And content that lends itself to sharing is seen as an indication of quaity among many advertisers, said Sugarman. But given that perception among brands, one wonders whether publishers might look to game Facebook, producing content built for sharing just as others has produced content with Google's algorithm very much in mind.

In fact, according to Grady, publishers like WetPaint have gotten producing social-friendly content to a near science. For example, his team monitors how fans react to specific characters and storylines in a show like ABC's "The Bachelor" -- even what time of day fans are most likely to respond to artciles -- and looks to maximize sharing using that amunition.

"I don't see that as gaming anything," said Grady. "That's about smart strategy and developing an expertise. You can get very good at learning what your audience wants."

HuffPo Slips Into the Stream

Tim Peterson — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:04:42 +0000

“We’re not going to become a cable network,” declared Huffington Post editor Roy Sekoff, explaining the rollout last week of The Huffington Post Streaming Network.

Yet questions on what exactly it is going to be will continue to dog the network until its planned early summer launch.

For 12 hours a day and five days a week, HuffPo will stream live and archived video ranging from breaking news to celebrity interviews to debates between HuffPo writers and commenters.

Already heavily scrutinized is HuffPo’s eschewing of a set programming schedule. Sekoff likened it to mirroring the Internet’s serendipitous experience, which would be fine if Internet users weren’t so much like hummingbirds flitting from one site to the next. Advertisers will not be guaranteed TV-level eyeballs at any given time for the simple reason that the network won’t be able to sustain them.

While Fox News, CNN and CBS News have been streaming live news in one form or another for years, none has become a veritable success. HuffPo conceivably could carve away marketshare and stake itself as the go-to online news broadcaster for many consumers, echoing the online news publisher’s original ascent.

That a leadership vacancy exists doesn’t mean, however, that HuffPo will be able to fill it. Paul Slavin, svp and gm of Everyday Health Studios and former ABC News svp who oversaw the company’s digital network ABC News Now, said while ABC News lowering its pay wall for a breaking news story would sometimes result in up to 10 million viewers, HuffPo’s “challenge is going to be day-to-day. They’ll be able to get people to watch when there’s big news like a hurricane, but they need to train people to come regularly.”

HuffPo will also need to attract advertisers to sponsor the network on a regular basis. The site is seeking five or six founding sponsors. (Select advertisers and agencies received the earliest previews around the time of last month’s Consumer Electronics Show.) The network will use a premium sponsorship model, featuring “a handful of partners” sharing a voice across online, mobile and tablet, said Janet Balis, svp and head of sales strategy, marketing and partnerships at AOL Advertising. Advertising opportunities include preroll ads and segment sponsorships.

HuffPo doesn’t appear to be too concerned about competing for TV advertising dollars. Balis said she doesn’t think about it in those terms and pointed to digital’s interactive capabilities as a key differentiator. Advertisers, said Sekoff, could sponsor a tweet that would appear atop the network’s social feed à la Twitter’s Promoted Tweets.

Steve Minichini, president of interactive marketing at TargetCast, had an early look at the network and said the offering will impress marketers, provided that HuffPo doesn’t bombard viewers with ads. “Online video’s done really well with advertisers for brand recall and brand affinity because the commercial load has been light,” he said.

“I am unclear…how HuffPo is going to roll out its video ad sponsorships,” Minichini added. “But if they keep the load light, they have enough inventory to make a decent amount of revenue and still have a different, meaningful consumer connection to their marketers.”

Mary Shirley, vp of digital media activation at Horizon Media, hasn’t seen the network yet but said a key consideration for her is the context in which an ad is shown. Given the network’s seat-of-the-pants programming, an airline could sponsor a segment on holiday travel only to see HuffPo cut to a breaking story about a plane crash. Shirley assumed there will be safeguards in place to avoid that pratfall.

“It has to be for advertisers who are already comfortable in news in general,” she said.

Beyond advertisers, it will be interesting to see how HuffPo's potential live-news-on-the-Web competitors react, given that they've got plenty of time to formulate a strategy. One thing to watch for: will Fox News and MSNBC follow CNN's lead, and start streaming their cable networks live online -- albeit only to paying cable subscribers, as CNN does.