Why mobile is the future of advertising

In this AdAge interview, Google Mobile Product Manager Summit Agarwal sums up why the mobile web is absolutely changing everything for marketers:

The phone is the ultimate ad vehicle. It's the first one ever in the history of the planet that people go to bed with. It's ubiquitous across the world, across demographics, across age groups.

Credibility, confidence, and preparation

A new series from Lifehacker this week: How to Present Yourself Powerfully. The first excerpt gives some great tips for improving your public speaking skills, but here's a simple summary of how to succeed as a presenter:

• The ultimate goal is credibility, which you get from having
• Confidence, which you can only get through
• Preparation

Preparation certainly means knowing your subject matter, but it also means knowing your audience, the room set-up, the technology you're using--even knowing your own speaking voice. Like most things in life, there's no substitute for hard work. By putting in the time it takes to do it right, you'll gain the confidence you need to feel comfortable at the front of the room.

Your mobile audience: what's in it for them?

One of the biggest opportunities for today's marketers is the mobile web. The cell phone is the device with the most potential to encourage immediate action, since most users carrying it with them all the time and since it almost always commands the user's immediate attention. The problem, however, is that most people don't want ads on their phones. In fact, they're only going to get more adamant about not wanting ads after marketers start making the mistake of assuming they do.

So how can marketers communicate with customers in a way that is constructive and welcome? The key is providing information that is useful to the consumer--on their terms, not yours. In a sense, it's like any other medium: by understanding what's in it for them, you'll do a much better job of being heard and engaging your audience.

What specific kinds of information can effectively be communicated via mobile? There are some great examples in this AdAge column, but here are a few others that immediately come to mind:

• Restaurant reservation confirmations, other service provider (doctors, dentists, stylyst) reminder. And giving customers the ability to make reservations/appointments via mobile web is a no brainer.
  
• Weight loss encouragement and nutrition reminders sent right before breakfast, lunch, and dinner by weight management and fitness centers
• Reminders about financial aid, registration, and other deadline from colleges and universities

The idea is to anticipate needs users will have while on the go. And as web users of all kinds become more task-oriented, more mobile will increasingly displace desktop computer use. That's great news if you have valuable information to share. If you don't, then it's time to start thinking about what you can do to change that. The best place to start? Ask your customers what kind of information--if any--they'd like to receive on the cell phone. If you've worked hard to earn their trust, they'll tell you. If you haven't, you need to work on that before expecting they'll give you permission to communicate with them via the mobile web.

Photo: sofa on stock.xchng

Is online TV for real? You betcha.

Hard upon the heels of her Joe-the-Plumber -clogged visit to Memorial Coliseum, Sarah Palin is attracting even more attention elsewhere--online, on Hulu.com, for example. AdAge.com reports that while the live TV-viewing audience was SNL's largest in 14 years, it will soon be surpassed by the online viewing audience:

Two clips of the Alaska governor on "SNL," her fake press conference and appearance on "Weekend Update," have racked up 6.1 million views on NBC.com. Derivative versions such as those used in news coverage, as well as pirated versions of the clips, have been viewed another 2.85 million times on sites like YouTube, MySpace and Yahoo, according to web video measurement firm Visible Measures.

Combined, the videos have been viewed 8.85 million times since Sunday, an impressive number in four days. But that doesn't include what may be the biggest source of online viewing: NBCU and News Corp.'s joint venture Hulu.com.

Neither Hulu nor NBC will provide Hulu's streaming numbers, but they're likely to be high. Hulu streamed four times as many videos (142 million) as NBC.com (36 million) during September, according to Nielsen's Video Census. While it's possible a high percentage of viewers looking for "SNL" clips would go first to NBC.com, it's also likely that Hulu counts for as many, if not more, views as NBC. The opening skit with Tina Fey holding a press conference as Sarah Palin, while the real VP nominee looked on, was the No. 3 most watched Hulu clip this week, while the clip of Amy Poehler's Palin rap sat at No. 2.

The success of Hulu.com points to three important trends for marketers and other communication-watchers:

• Audiences are learning that there's no sense in investing 30 minutes in a show when you can watch the best bits in a fraction of the time. Shorter is better.
  
• The size of the audience gravitating to online viewing is only going to increase, so keep an eye on what you're being asked to pay for broadcast and cable air time.
• Also pay close attention to content that's timely, and line up your advertising accordingly. Palin is a phenomenon, but a week from Wednesday she may start to be forgotten altogether. Get on the bandwagon as soon as you can, but bail out before the wheels start to fall off.
  

Cutting Through the Clutter

In today's communication environment, one of the biggest challenges is getting your message to stand out. To cut through the clutter, you can't just raise the volume: you need to target your audience very precisely and create a message that immediately catches their attention without resorting to gimmicks or shock value.

As consumers have more and more options for tuning out advertising, communicating a marketing message becomes even more of a challenge. But it's not impossible, as this article in Monday's Wall Street Journal demonstrates. A sample:

Can the marketing stimulus be delivered at a time when the customer has few other distractions?

Marketing messages should target customers at times when they are unoccupied, perhaps even actively seeking some sort of information to process. Consider, for example, an airplane on the landing path into an airport. Sitting upright, with in-flight entertainment and electronic devices switched off, passengers have little to do but to look out of the window and wait for the aircraft to land.

Seeking to capitalize on this opportunity, London-based Ad-Air Group PLC places advertisements flat on the ground over an area as large as five acres alongside flight paths in and out of the world's busiest airports. Depending on their landing approach, passengers are provided with an unrestricted view of an ad for more than 10 seconds.

Read the other four questions and consider how your organization can cut through the clutter instead of just adding more noise.

Real Bad Realtor Ads

Want to inject a little awful into your Friday? Well, look no further than Keepin' It Realtor, "a showcase for the world’s finest real estate creative." Because in a bad housing market, there's no better way to stand out than by superimprosing your head on the body of a lamb.

Social networking jumps the shark...or maybe the pig

I'm a big believer in both bacon and niche social networks. But Bacon Lovers' Talk is too much, even for me. Anytime you see the phrase "Join the Bacon Community!" it's time to close the browser.

Free Seth Godin download from Audible.com

For a limited time, Audible.com is offering a free download of Tribes, a new audio book from uber guru Seth Godin. A companion casebook is also available as a PDF, also at no cost.

Hat tip: PR Squared

The changing science of media measurement

Measuring media consumption habits is becoming more and more difficult as people interact with content in divergent ways. If you watch The Office on Hulu, for example, you might not be counted as viewer under the traditional Nielsen model. And that makes it difficult for advertisers to judge the true value of any given medium or time slot.

A new technology, however, is trying to change all that by measuring consumer response to ads across multiple media. And they're doing it, as the Wall Street Journal reports, using the communication tool that is becoming the Holy Grail of all media--the cell phone.

[Integrated Media Measurement] embeds its software into the cellphones of the company's 4,900 panelists. The software picks up audio from an ad or a TV show and converts it into its own digital code that is then uploaded into an IMMI database, which includes codes for media content such as TV shows, commercials, movies and songs.

IMMI's database then figures out what the cellphone was exposed to by matching the code. Cellphone conversations and background noise are filtered out by the software, IMMI says, since there is no "match" in the IMMI database.

To get a handle on the effectiveness of a given ad, IMMI's data can show, for example, when a panel member is exposed to a movie trailer on TV and whether that same consumer later goes to see the movie. Similarly, IMMI data can show if a panelist watching a promo for a TV program will later watch the show, either on TV or online. IMMI thinks it can expand that idea from films and TV shows to consumer products like shampoo or toothpaste. It is testing its technology with a national grocery store chain.

Anyone who buys ads on mass media will want to keep an eye on new trends in measurement since the resulting numbers dictate the cost of airtime. On thing's certain: as we consume multiple media simultaneously and in nontraditional settings--even on our cell phones themselves--measuring consumption will become less of an exact science and more of an educated guess.

Graphic from the Wall Street Journal/NBC Universal

ZenHabits' "New Rules" for productivity at work

Still doing the same old thing and getting the same old results? This post from ZenHabits will change the way you look at on the job productivity--and it might just result in you working fewer hours, not more. A sample:

4. Don’t multi-task — multi-project and single-task.

Old school: Multi-tasking is productive. Juggling tasks shows how productive you are, says old school productivity. I’ve written enough about multi-tasking for you to know where I stand on that.

Productivity 2.0: Multi-project and single-task. While I won’t go on once again about single-tasking — focusing on one task at a time to be more effective — I will say that multi-projecting has its uses. Let’s say you’re working on Task 1 of Project A — you should single-task while working on Task 1. But when it’s done, you might need to wait for a response from your boss before moving on to Task 2. In that case, while you’re waiting, you can work on Task 1 of Project B, single-tasking while doing that. When you’re done with that, you might need to hear back from a client before moving on to the next task of Project B — in which case you can either return to Project A if your boss responded, or move on to Project C. Single-task while working on any one task, but working on different projects to make your time more efficient can be a useful skill.

Go read the other 7 and then get busy getting less busy.