The Day is now.

I have mentioned often that every pre-internet medium still exists in the marketplace today. The internet has not killed newspapers, it has not killed radio and it has not killed television.

But it might be about to kick it in the groin. According to AdAge, TV Upfront could lose $600 million this year, mostly to online. And print revenue has been in steady decline for years. Online, however, is skyrocketing. In New Zealand, the online ad spend is up more than 200% Year on Year at the moment.

According to Claire Atkinson, some clients are entirely opting out of upfront spends. Big clients like Johnson and Johnson. They are taking their chances with scatter. For what it is worth, I think this is a very clever move. Having spent several years on the media selling side of things, when clients opt out of your premium products in favour of running the risk of poor placement, you tend to entice them back by placing their advertisements in the good spots anyway -especially if you have holes to fill. Hats off to J&J. Spend the extra money doing exciting things online.

Again, it is important to remember that no pre-internet mediums have died yet. In fact, the only medium that looks to disappear in the short term is the internet itself. Within ten years time it won't technically exist as a separate category in everybody's head. It will be a utility that is pumped into your house like power or water. You'll get your TV through it, you'll get your radio through it, your movies, your phones, your shopping, your print subscription renewals, your mail and so on. Makes you wonder what 'online advertising' will become then. Will it all just be 'advertising'?

Let The Games Begin! After a word from these sponsors...

RealArcade is pre-rolling streaming video advertisements as their games are being downloaded. Yep. This feels good. After being harmlessly misquoted in AdNews beside other commentators who clearly haven't grasped the potential of In-Game or Game-Related advertising, this is a happy day.

Why? RealArcade offers what are known as 'casual games'. Think backgammon. This may surprise you but the majority of people who play these games are women over thirty. That means disposable income, early adopters, internet savvy, higher than normal leisure time (they're playing games online for god's sake). What a fantastic demographic!

And it is only stage one. I am happy because RealArcade will be able to show advertisers demonstrable ROI. The success of advertising with casual games will hopefully be held up to the naysayers as proof that In-Game is not only a viable new marketing space, it is an effective one. It's all about the small steps.

Banning MP3 Players?

According to Deloitte, media companies should consider banning MP3 players from workplaces with sensitive digital content because the risk of illegal copying and file sharing is too great.

The Financial Times wrote that more than half of all media companies were the victims of computer crime in the last year. Oh, really? Because to me that seems like pretty good odds. Here's a newsflash: every company in the world that has at least one computer was likely the victim of computer crime last year. It would seem probable that media companies would be among the better prepared and thusly suffer less crime.

Of course, banning iPods and memory sticks from the workplace is a woefully ineffective solution. My cellphone -which I use at work- has storage capacity and is infrared as well as bluetooth enabled. In the coming years there will be few technological devices that won't be able to share files simply by being near each other (or even in the next building).

And even if I had left my cellphone at home, I can post the sensitive content to a free website from my workstation -unless of course media companies start restricting internet access as well.

Perhaps the most annoying part of this is the vague scent of hypocrisy. Here we are on the eve of Steve Jobs doing a massive deal with Hollywood to make feature films available on iTunes so they can be watched on iPods and there is the possibility these lucrative little devices will be banned from the workplaces that are making money off their very existence.

Banning storage devices to prevent content theft will never work. It really only leaves you with one other -equally draconian- measure. Random employee cellphone/iPod searches.

There is going to be some icky times in the lead up to my golden age.

RIAA Goes After Lip-Synchers

Oh my. I just do not know where to begin with this one. RIAA has decided that people who post videos of them lip-synching to songs is a copyright violation. There has been some incredibly heated comment about this around the place -and rightly so.

What has caused this moronic action? According to Stephen Abbot, it is the fact that RIAA has worked out music videos can be sold for $1.99 on iTunes. In their twisted estimation, this means teenagers lip-synching to Britney in their room is some kind of competition.

The posting on Project Opus I linked to in the first paragraph has some interesting comments regarding copyright. I for one would find the court case hilarious. Credibly proving financial loss as a result of some teenage homo in invercargill mincing away to Madonna (Hi Dan!) would be the kind of televised court proceedings I would want to watch.

Of course, the real tradegy here is the wider picture. This lumbering institution is so far behind the media trend that is doesn't offer much hope for the short term future of content delivery. Not only are they just waking up to the fact that people have been doing this sort of thing online for years, but rather than capitalising on it, they are trying to stop it. This is like trying to melt the iceberg with a hairdryer after the Titanic has started sinking.

Here's a thought. Why not try and capitalise on the trend. I'm going to use the 'V' word again. Yep. Viral. Find the most hilarious attempt at lip-synching (perhaps even a competition?) and watch it fly around the world dozens of times a day, ending up in millions of inboxes.

Do you think people will opt to keep the crappy lip-synch version rather than buy your flashy video from iTunes? Well... they might if your music video sucks.

But then we get back to the whole 'Golden Age of Content' thing. If the content is good, I will want it. If a teenager in Alaska does a better job, don't try and sue her, improve your content.

Right in the Face: Effective Movie Marketing

I promise I read other stuff... It's just that MediaPost has been so good of late. Larrow Dobrow's article about the effectiveness of pre-release info as a marketing tool was both refreshing and convincing.

The example of Brian Singer's video diaries and other content that has been released over the last twelve months in the lead up to Superman Returns generating viral and word-of-mouth interest is intriguing. However, it may also be misleading. Firstly, pre-release content in this case is something most people want to consume for the following reasons:

1) Brian Singer is brilliant
2) Superman has an enormous fan base
3) Brian Singer has a history of treating comic content exceptionally well on the big screen

I want to see this pre-release content -like I wanted to see Lord of The Rings content (but not King Kong). I would, however, rather eat celery soup by the truckload than watch Ashton Kutcher or Helen Hunt video diaries.

Pre-release content is the marketing pathway that has the best chance of salvaging box office sales, but it is only going to work if they deliver good, interesting movies. Like every other form of content in the world, films are now at the mercy of that great leveller: viral popularity.

Bring on the Golden Age of content!

Beyond Product Placement

What would I do without MediaPost? This morning I read Erik Sass's article about a MediaVest panel discussing the future of product placement.

It became abundantly clear that editorial staff still have not quite got their head around where branding can be integrated into content. They seem to think that the only way one can conceivably 'place' a product is by writing a glowing article about the benefits of some new-fangled broom. They appeared to be universally opposed to it.

Eric Bader from MediaVest -not a writer, himself- was initially the lone voice of dissent. "There is absolutely a role for brands and advertisers in print content... We've all seen bad examples of brand integration in story lines and content where it's ham fisted and not very natural..." He gones on to talk about an integration where the end user does not just consume the content, but acts on it.

It is this 'Activation' that will ultimately take the place of clunky product placement. Incorporating appropriate brands into an appropriate content experience, rather than generating content around a specific product.

And low and behold there was apparently a turnaround of opinions from the staunchly opposed fourth estate types. The internet was brought up as an ideal environment for an 'Activation' approach, ESPN gave some examples of content that was co-created with Agencies, etc.

See... Clearly I agree with Eric from MediaVest. That is not the point of this post. The point is that it will always be advertising that drives innovation in any mediascape. It was advertising that led to colour printing, it was advertising that led to the first gloss magazines and it will be advertising that drives the seamless integration of branding and content in an online space. Much of the print industry is staring death in the face due to a rapidly changing media marketplace and they are still thinking like it is the 1950s and Betty Crocker has personally asked them to shill her latest cake mix.

Did you know that Alexander Graham Bell's intended purpose for the telephone was to play classical music down the line to a remote audience? Sometimes creators are too close to their creation to get any sense of perspective. And that is where those of us that are in the business of spruiking new-fangled brooms come in.

The First Stirrings of My Golden Age

An article I wrote for The Cud which is due out on the thirteenth makes mention of a new Golden Age of Content. This is my hopeful dream/best case scenario for the future of webisodes.

One of the first indicators of this Golden Age is the rapid increase of network content available from iTunes, etc. And then I find that CBS is adding Survivor and its CSI shows, among others, to the site.

Of course, they still have their heads firmly stuck in the broadcast model. The above MediaPost article quotes Larry Kramer, the president of CBS Digital Media as saying "We like the idea of going up at the end of the season... The only really new shows up there are ours."

He is technically correct but clearly my hypothetical Golden Age is a long way off. Competition will ultimately be less important than viral popularity. If Desperate Housewives is better than Commander in Chief -and it is- then it will get more downloads. In my Golden Age the attempts to shovel repeats of B-Grade content onto the online audience when your competitors have come to the end of their program run won't work. The solution will not be to sneak inferior products onto iTunes in the middle of the night, the solution will be to provide better content than your competitors.

That is what I mean by a Golden Age. Hey... Why not be optimistic?

Vindication on In-Game Advertising

My article about In-Game Advertising definitely came out at the right time. This appears to be the topic of the moment and -once again- too many people seem to be missing the point.

From some marketers I hear that a lack of control over the content and context in which an advertisement may appear is a deterrent. This really annoys me for a couple of reasons. The first is that violent/uncontrolled content is exactly what brings gamers to a particular game in the first instance. The second reason is that In-Game advertising promises to be the very pinnacle of context aware advertising. This means that depending on your player/character profile, no two gamers will be exposed to the same combination of advertisements.

I was recently contacted by AdNews regarding the potential I saw for Australia and New Zealand to capitalise on In-Game advertising. Are there any companies in our little corner of the world that are offering/plan to offer In-Game advertising? Who cares? It is context aware advertising. There is nothing stopping you from asking your agency to book it through a company in outer Mongolia -just specify that those players with either New Zealand or Australian IP addresses are the only ones who get access to your advertisements. Star Wars Galaxies recognises no national boundaries!

Perhaps more surprising than marketers missing the point (everything is more surprising than marketers missing the point) is that some gamers are as well. The supremely valuable MediaPost delivered to my inbox a column/blog/rant a few weeks ago from some gaming expert or another claiming that a) gamers will reject in-game advertising and b) advertisements for modern products will appear ridiculous in MMORP like Galaxies or World of Warcraft.

Well... Yes, they will. Which is why you won't see billboards for Pepsi in Azeroth -but will will see context aware advertising on the back end of the gaming experience: Player screens, start pages, etc. All this tells me is that few people have grasped the notion that this is an entirely new way of having end users interact with your brand.

And as for the first point -that gamers will reject in-game advertising- it was only this last Thursday that MediaPost delivered another little gem: In-Game Advertising Not a Deterrent to Most Gamers. Games sites reach almost 50% of the Internet universe -that's 76.9 million consumers. Nearly half of the Heavy Gamers felt that in-game advertising was an inevitable part of the future of their play.

Vindication. You heard it straight from the gamers' mouths. In-Game advertising is inevitable and effective. Just like I said.

I think that is why I am so interested in this advertising category. Gamers have a healthier sense of co-ownership of the content than, say, regular newspaper readers. They also seem less inclined to bitch about every little thing.