Wired Magazine and Adobe teamed up to create a digital version of their magazine. The results are quite impressive. Here’s a video that explains their vision and shows off the iPad version:
The user is experience is great. The ability to navigate, zoom, manipulate, and see videos is very useful.
All this technology is way cool, but it’s still missing a key ingredient – Relevance! Everyone sees the same stories and same ads. Sorry, I’m not in the market for a Ferrari.
Someone let me know when the content can be personalized and relevant to the reader. In other words, when will magazines finally make the jump from broadcast media to addressable media. That’s when things get really interesting.
Industry analysts seem to agree with 4INFO: According to J.P. Morgan's 2010 Internet Industry Outlook, mobile advertising is expected to grow by 45% in 2010 to $3.8 billion fueled primarily by mobile message advertising (SMS Text).
I’ve been doing some research into the online display advertising channel as a natural extension to NextMark‘s media planning tools. You might assume that everything is streamlined and super-automated in this world. But I am finding that it is messy and crude, perhaps even more so than the offline world (if you can believe that).
A video from Yahoo! previewing AMP! (since rebranded as APT) does a good job of explaining some of the messy problems with today’s solutions:
“Turns out that buying and selling ads online is byzantine with inefficient processes and cumbsome legacy systems. Nothing works well or together. [..] The current system is – to put it politely – slow. It may also be inaccurate. And you know going in that you will have to overbook to cover your promise. […] You have to cobble them all together. It took ten separate contracts and two weeks. […] A disconnected process full of time-consuming manual steps and multiple approval bottlenecks to catch the mistakes inherent with the process.”
Is it just me, or does this seem a lot like list rental? (more…)
New from comScore: comScore presents the 2009 U.S. Digital Year in Review, its annual report on the prevailing digital trends of the past year and their implications for the future.
According to comScore, “2009 proved to be a critical year in digital marketing as the economic environment brought unprecedented challenges to the industry. After years of strong growth across the digital economy, the recession introduced softness to many digital business sectors. But despite these economic headwinds, consumers’ use of digital media climbed to new heights in 2009 as the Internet continued to evolve as an integral component of Americans’ personal and professional lives.”
According to their press release, The report provides a comprehensive view across the fixed and mobile digital sectors to uncover this past year’s important consumer trends. (more…)
Marketers are now realizing that abandoning direct mail for digital media may have negative consequences for return on investment (ROI), and the impact may be worse than expected. When budgets are tight, it’s harder to see the forest from the trees, and it’s easier to make cuts with less regard for lifetime value (LTV). Fortunately, information spreads fast nowadays so we get to hear pretty quickly what others have learned from their mistakes. Conversely, there are a few mailers that kept quiet about their success with direct mail in 2009 due to the positive implications of fewer competitors’ offers in the box. (more…)
According to J.P. Morgan's 2010 Internet Industry Outlook, mobile advertising is expected to grow by 45% in 2010 to $3.8 billion fueled primarily by mobile message advertising (SMS Text):
Although still a small piece of $159.2 billion that is expected to be spent on direct marketing in 2010, mobile advertising is a fast growing segment. Other gainers include display ads rebounding to +10.5% and search +13.7%.
DM News article "Digital Shines in 2010" predicts the continued rise of digital spending as a share of total marketing dollars. Two interesting takeaways from a direct mail perspective:
#1) Digital is stealing share away from direct mail
"Just like in the old days, direct marketing used to be the safe haven because it provides quick, measurable results. Online has assumed that safe haven role now," said Adam Smith, futures director at GroupM.
#2) Digital is more measurable than direct mail
"If we send a direct mailer, it's an absolute impression, but is it as trackable? Will the consumer, for example, type Overstock.com/directmailer? It's fuzzy. Some people do and others don't," [Stormy Simon, SVP of marketing and customer care for Overstock.com] explained. "But I do know that when I spend on online marketing, I'm able to say 'I spent a penny and I got a penny [back].'"
The hallmark of direct mail has always been accountability. Digital is beating it at it's own game. The challenge to direct mail is to prove ROI superiority if it is to hold onto a significant portion of advertising expenditures.
The US Postal Service lost $3.8 billion last year. While still one of the most effective marketing channels, postal mail is in danger of extinction. Can the post office be saved? Postal Journal is a new website that aims to find a solution.
Postal Journal's mission is:
To explore the evolution of the American postal system as part of the nation's 21st century economic and communication infrastructure. To facilitate an exchange of postal perspectives by individuals without regard to past or present occupational affiliations.
The website is not high on design, but it contains links to a number of interesting proposals, such as the "Examination of Potential Postal Business Models" by Alan Robinson. He studies various models and proposes consideration of a private corporate model as other services have done successfully:
Is Robinson's the right business model? That's a good debate. And it's good that the Postal Journal website is presenting this idea and many others for consideration. Unfortunately, the website is not interactive… it would be very helpful to see discussion and debate related to the various proposals.
“Despite the tremendous growth in mobile usage and the substantial
investment by many businesses in the space, the mobile web is still in
its early stages. We believe that great mobile advertising products can
encourage even more growth in the mobile ecosystem. That’s what has us
excited about this deal.”
The trend is clear. This deal shouts the importance of the mobile advertising channel. What can we learn from this? What should we do to capitalize on this trend?