Chasing the Cheaters Who Undermine Online Research

AdAge.com: People who cheat on online surveys could soon find themselves -- or at least their computers -- on an industrywide digital blacklist of respondents who are undermining the $4 billion online-research industry.

Most research is BS anyway
I've been to focus groups, lots of them.
I'm registered with about 6 different companies, I know the cardinal rule of saying I don't work in marketing or journalism, AND I also know that I'm meant to say I haven't been to a focus group in the last 3 months.
Most other people with a brain know the rules too.

I've also been to focus groups and seen people be:

• Schizophrenic in answering questions, lead by different phrasing of the same question
• Saying what they aspire to be/do/want, not what they actually are/do/have.
• They are easily influenced by peers in the same group
• And they say what they think the moderator wants to hear.

There is some accuracy to focus groups, but for the most part, the whole thing is bogus. Online surveys are the best.
Click, click, click answer anything wherever the mouse falls.
I'm not a full time survey abuser, like I'm sure most of the people are who are referred to in this article. Those guys will be caught for sure.
The moderate abusers like me, we're the problem and there's probably more of us. How will they catch us??

How Older Pros Can Transition to Digital

Ad Age: Leslie Laredo - Media professionals, now hear this: It is time to walk the talk or take a walk.

Pull the other one
I love these articles. When I read the title and little blurb, I noticed myself smirk and think "this is going to be a fucking doozie".

It wasn't that much of a doozie, but the stink did reek.


Ad spend on digital doubles, triples, is raised to the 1000th power ....who gives a shit?
Consumers certainly don't and traditional styles of ad messaging no longer resonate. What you will begin to find is marketers paying premiums for the creative power within new ways of doing things. These new methods will actually connect with their customer in the customer's head space AND costs peanuts in terms of media spend.

Terminology et al
So 2007. It's not about knowing what all the buzzwords are. It's about knowing who your consumer is, what they want and how you hit their buttons.

With the right training and resources, the expertise of the dinosaur will win out.
Bull. Shit.
Again, not about learning all the cool tech crap that's going on now. The bottom line is whatever ad sheme you envision, whatever fantasy you dream up, you will be able to do accomplish it now or in the immediate future. Tech is moving so fast you can't teach someone what's happening now, because 3 weeks ago it was already over.
What all advertisers should be doing is learning how consumers have adapted, what has made them change, the things that get them excited now.
A newsflash- crappy ad banners or keeping up with the ad spend of your nearest competitor won't do it. Keeping ahead of your consumer will.

Verklin Keeps Media Panelists on Their Toes

Advertising Age: Aegis Media Americas CEO David Verklin challenged panelists at the AAAA Media Conference and Trade Show on whether the divide between digital and traditional media was a cause for organizational friction at media properties.

Subtext for: Media industry and all advertising is in the shit, but let's talk about it some more rather than do anything to fix it!
I don't know how many more of these joke conferences I can take!
I understand that people need to get away from the office for a bit, but instead of all these rubbish topics, can't we start making topics like:

• "If Verklin and Hendra did have a punch up, who would have won?"
• "Let's take some Lipitor and then row a boat to see what happens"
• "Do blogs really kill people?"
• "Poll: Will Nielsen ever get their act together?"
• "When will the bullshit stop?"
  

Imagine the great debates that would occur if we had conferences like this??
George- do you think we can host these topics at your conference?

Think Different: Maybe the Web's Not a Place to Stick Your Ads

AdAge: Matthew Creamer Asks Whether We're All Missing the Point When It Comes to the Internet - Should the internet be viewed as an ad medium, a place where brands pay for the privilege of being adjacent to content such as prime-time TV and glossy magazines -- those relics of the pre-blog days, when getting into the media game required infrastructure and distribution?

Matthew Creamer, are you wasting your time at AdAge?
Mr Creamer, you appear to be a sharp tool in the tool box. It's nice that you write this article, it's nice that you talk the talk, but I don't think it will be any time soon before people walk the walk.

You could compare this whole scenario to the music industry and record labels keeping a stranglehold of the way things were. Unfortunately, they are ignoring the fact that consumers aren't hanging around to listen to their dickhead antics and neither are the good music artists.

In our scenario, we have the marketers- all the text books and industry history teaches them what they should do, how consumers behave, how it all works. They ignore that it's all changed. They don't give a crap and it's because if their new campaign fails it's their ass on the line. One marketer once told me that they stick to the same old shit because if it fails they can just say "we'll, that's what we did last year". That sentence deserves a bashing in its own right, but for now it proves a point.

The point that advertising is its own giant ecosystem*. We have the ad providers, creatives, agencies and the marketers. All the cogs work together, people are used to the system - the marketer to the agency to the creative to the agency to the ad providers and all exchanging massive amounts of cash.
Here is a graph of the way things are:

We all know advertising as we know it is ass-up. Ad prices will go down because it's a whole load of bullshit, creatives and agencies who really get it will still be able to charge their premiums because they understand that consumers are in the power seat and you don't need vast amounts of money to get to them. You just need to speak their language and give them something that adds value to their lives.
This value doesn't have to be anything massive, it can be an emotional pull from interacting with a brand device or actually walking away with something for nothing.


It's not brain surgery, it is just advertising! If you get it, you get my twist-and-turn explanation, if you don't, use the graphs.

*ecosystem used here in a valid and logical fashion, i.e. a non wanker way.

Facebook Exec: Beacon Will Expand

Adweek: Facebook still sees ad system as Beacon for future growth Facebook's Beacon ad system will expand as users become more open to sharing information with their Facebook friends about their online activities that take place off the social network, according to outgoing chief revenue officer Owen Van Natta.

Ummm, you aren't pulling my leg
Beacon is and was shit.
Owen Van Natta, I'm glad you're leaving Facebook, because you have no idea, NONE:

What's more, Van Natta, who is leaving the company, said the uproar over Beacon was not really from users-
"It was really the press and people concerned about privacy" he said.

To even say that just shows how arrogant you really are AND how out of touch you are with your Facebook audience.

And yes Owen, often the press inflates issues to make them seem more dramatic and newsworthy, but in this instance they were actually reporting the truth.
I'd like to point you to a case with Blockbuster back in the late 80s. They also chose to publicise member information and were fined for their actions. I would think the precedent indicates Facebook erring on the wrong side of the law.

They seem to have not learned from their mistakes. You just don't know how to listen.

Hollywood Tests Tolerance For Ads With Online Video

The Washington Post: One of the key ad innovations at Hulu, the online video site developed collaboratively by NBC Universal and Fox, is allowing users to select which video ad will precede their programming. Jupiter Research analyst Bobby Tulsiani said: "It's one of the more aggressive moves we've seen. It's much more targeted than what you see on TV, where its hard to say if an ad actually got watched."

Hulu is the fucking bomb!
When I first got it, I watched Weekend at Bernies. Great movie.
The worst thing was when they took off all the episodes and movies and I was left with shitty clips.
That was bad.
I never went back.
But now, they're back in the game!
I'm yet to see what ads I get to choose, but it better not be that Hillshite Farm ad (and no, that is not a typo).

Nielsen offers free PreView

The Hollywood Reporter: New Nielsen report explores link between box office, online buzz Movies that gross $100 million or more are likely to have garnered more than their share of virtual ink from bloggers, according to Nielsen PreView.

Looks like someone at Nielsen just discovered word-of-mouth
Good one guys. What's next? Ratings that actually measure accurately? I don't think I could handle that too.

Digital Buyers Lament Ad-Buying Process, Seek Guidelines

Mediaweek/Adweek: Digital ad buyers want standards
Media buyers at an industry conference lamented a lack of standards for running online campaigns, suggesting that digital media adopt an open system to facilitate buys. Group M CEO Irwin Gottlieb said, "Take any 10 media plans and there will be five different ways they define Monday to Friday. We have to come up with standardized ways of defining data."

You can't make guidelines for the shittest campaigns, eva!
Ahh, media buyers, the best job in the industry. After seeing what they do, within 5 minutes you begin to understand why they get all the free shit they do.

What on earth are they seeking guidelines for? A monkey could do the stuff they do. Plus you still need the human check at the end (been there, done that and I can honestly admit I contemplated suicide several times).

Maybe it's not about the monkey. Perhaps it would be a good idea to wake up to the fact that a 0.2% click through rate is really not worth any investment. Maybe it's better to make a campaign that actually benefits people, instead of annoying them.
Furthermore, why would an industry want to automate something that only gets a 0.2% return on investment AND that's not even sales!!!

Garbage.

Fucking monkeys.

Nielsen hits me up for a hustle

Slow news day, they must have known. Right on!
So the Nielsen folks called me up to do a survey.
Straight away I asked them if I get mula for my time.
I get $10 for 40 minutes!! That's it! That's all!
I don't think that's my going rate.

But the idiots are sending me the money without having completed the online survey.
(and I just went to the survey and the link doesn't even work! An easy way to make $10, now we're talking my going rate)

I can't wait for the next stage of this saga. I'm getting a huge package of something in the mail....I wonder what bullshay will be in there

Nike, Apple team up for iPod-powered fitness program

USA TODAY/Associated Press: Under a new partnership between Nike and Apple, members of select gyms will be able to plug their iPod Nanos into cardio equipment to create and monitor workout programs and send their data to a Nike Web site for analysis. The program is slated to launch this summer in some 500 gyms around the globe, according to this article.

As if Fat people use iPods!

They aren't cool enough.

Ahhh, fat kids - this is 1000 times funnier than it could ever be in English:

Status, status everywhere

People love updating their status. It's a little sub-text bubble attached wherever you go online.

At last count I had my:
Facebook status (on 3 separate accounts)
My MSN Messenger status
My ooVoo status
My Twittering stream
My skype status

And I update all of them differently. I've noticed everyone else does too. You can never have enough subtext. Clearly.

Now I feel like I need a real subtext to match my virtual subtext. Best format to do this would be an updateable T-Shirt:

Mine will say something like "Your mother"
Watch this space.