AllThingsD » Advertising Week

Exclusive: Here's Myspace's New Pitch: Music, Youth Culture and "Steadied" Traffic

Liz Gannes — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 01:45:41 +0000

Today and tomorrow, Specific Media-owned Myspace is at Advertising Week — with investor Justin Timberlake in tow — to pitch its new agenda to marketers. The company declined to make execs available for interview or describe what it is announcing (in fact, it objected to us calling this week’s appearances an “announcement”). But we did finally get our hands on a new Myspace deck.

Update: Specific Media clarified that this was not meant to be viewed as a pitch deck, and instead described the presentation as “supporting/background materials meant to be used to supplement discussion.

Specific is telling marketers that the new Myspace’s vision is “to become the #1 online community music destination”; its mission is “to feed the energy of youth culture everywhere.”

Myspace traffic has “steadied,” boast the new owners — though the charts in the deck only extend till July of this year. The core of their pitch centers on Myspace’s pre-existing music deals.

Specific Media calls Myspace “The Hulu of Music,” with “unique content rights with Big Four labels and 20K independent labels [which] allows for ad-supported music video and audio streaming.”

As for what Specific Media is doing to change and improve Myspace since buying it in June, there’s a screenshot of a beta version of a “social playlist” running down the right rail, and an unattributed assertion that video consumption on Myspace has doubled in the last 30 days.

There’s also an odd flowchart/“virtuous cycle” diagram to explain the product vision, as pictured above.

Here, see for yourself:

Myspace deck

Only One Yahoo Fearless Leader Note This Week: Please Ignore the Unignorable Rumors!

Kara Swisher — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 00:03:12 +0000

Yahoo’s interim CEO Tim Morse penned another weekly email to staff at the Silicon Valley Internet giant today; the only one from the company’s leadership, which sent out two internal memos last week.

It’s below, and again addresses the swirl of news around Yahoo’s plans as part of its ongoing strategery over the company’s future.

“I know there was some more swirl out there this week,” wrote Morse. “You know we don’t comment on rumors or speculation and for now, everything has been just that — rumors.”

Well, not so much, which I will be weighing in on soon via an old-fangled thing called reporting, Tim!

Until then, here is the latest missive:

Short note from me today. Before we head into the weekend, I wanted to give a shout out to the Flickr team for their great work on their new mobile features. What they rolled out this week got rave reviews and tons of great buzz. We also had a nice Demos and Drinks event here in Sunnyvale that I was able to check out, so thanks to all the Yahoos involved in that.

Last but certainly not least, I want to say thank you to the teams that are working hard on Advertising Week. It kicks off on Monday, and we’ve got some big stuff in store, so stay tuned on that front.

I know there was some more swirl out there this week. You know we don’t comment on rumors or speculation and for now, everything has been just that — rumors.

Rest assured, when we have something to share, we will. In the meantime, please know how much the entire executive team appreciates your great work — and please keep it up!

Have a good weekend.

Tim

Naked Brett Favre Won't Make Money for Nick Denton

Peter Kafka — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 17:27:02 +0000

Gawker Media’s Deadspin sports site says it will publish nude photos of Brett Favre today, along with some voicemails it says the quarterback left for a woman who is not his wife.

Which means that corner of Deadspin is going to be very, very popular today.

As well as unprofitable, says Gawker Media owner Nick Denton.

“These things are always money-losers,” Denton says via IM, before referring me to Gawker Media marketing director Erin Pettigrew for more.

But while I wait for her to get back to me, I can make some educated guesses to explain why lots of traffic won’t mean lots of money for Denton today.

It’s hard to serve ads into traffic spikes. Or at least that’s what Denton always says about his most popular posts, like the iPhone 4 prototype that Gizmodo showed off to Apple’s dismay, or a sorta-sex tape featuring “McSteamy” from “Grey’s Anatomy,” etc.
In this case, Gawker is very likely to serve up the Favre post without any advertising, anyway. When I interviewed Denton onstage at an Advertising Week event last week, I asked him specifically about how advertisers feel about “athlete dong” photos, which his readers love. His answer, in short, was that advertisers are understandably squeamish about this stuff, and can opt out of posts that contain it in advance. Have to assume this is one of those cases.

Requisite to-be-sure: Denton runs a for-profit business, and he won’t run athlete dong photos or anything else unless he can make money doing it.

So while those individual pageviews that the post generates won’t make him money, those visitors may well end up visiting other, dong-free posts on Gawker sites today, which will have ads.

And of course, the post will give Gawker and Deadspin that much more publicity, as mainstream media outlets that would never stoop to running athlete dong photos find time to talk about the site that did. (Cough.)

UPDATE: Sure enough, both the Favre post and the rest of Deadspin are currently ad-free. Via e-mail, Erin Pettigrew explains why that’s so:

In the case of major ad/edit adjacency issues such as this, we have a cadre of tech tools to handle the display conflict. Usually the decision is made to prevent ads from showing next to NSFW or similarly questionable content and then the tech solution is put into place to effect that immediately after. The tech tools range from removing ads on a per-post basis to scanning post content for particular topics against which we can negatively target ads.

If the adjacency affects takeovers and sponsorships where ad inventory cannot be otherwise rerouted, we communicate the scenario upfront to the client and involve them in the decision-making. The same tech solutions then apply.

It’s the classic airplane ad next to an airliner crash scenario for which publishers need to develop contingencies. For this particular scoop, the decision was indeed to clean the Favre post pages of ads.

I saw your note about spikes — you are correct that we aren’t able to instantly match ad demand to the surge of inventory supply caused by traffic spikes. This is because our inventory is 100% directly sold versus hawked by real time auction marketplaces. More pageviews does not directly equal more dollars! Also, note that our ad bookings close weeks to months before creative hits the websites. So, unless a spike is ‘scheduled,’ it can’t really be sold.

Yahoo Troops Skittish With No Word From Top on Exec Departures (So's Microsoft)

Kara Swisher — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 16:49:01 +0000

“We are wandering around and people are asking us questions and we don’t know what’s going on ourselves,” said one very nervous Yahoo ad salesperson this morning, in New York for Advertising Week, the most important gathering of the year for online sales. “There’s a lot of uncertainty from an employee perspective.”

You can say that again.

Today, as news BoomTown broke about the departure of Yahoo’s U.S. head Hilary Schneider and two other key execs at the Internet giant spread, I have been on the receiving end of a spate of emails and calls and text messages from staffers at the Silicon Valley icon searching for information about what’s up at their own company.

That’s because neither the top management of Yahoo (YHOO) nor its typically ineffectual board has communicated to its thousands of employees about exactly what is going on, nor about plans to replace bosses in charge of giant swaths of the business.

Now, for example, Yahoo’s ad sales execs say they don’t know who to report to, since Schneider is headed out and no one person replaced U.S. ad sales leader Joanne Bradford in Yahoo’s key moneymaking market after she left in March.

And media workers, such as GMs of powerful Yahoo news, sports, finance and mobile efforts, all under departing Audience head David Ko and VP of Media Jimmy Pitaro, are also wondering who is now in charge.

Here’s my promise: I will have all internal memos here, as soon as they are released and I can get my mitts on them.

It’s not clear when that will be. Sources said Yahoo might make a statement about the situation this afternoon, before the planned announcement tomorrow afternoon about the exec departures, but it has not been determined yet.

But sources said Yahoo might have an exec to announce to replace at least Schneider by today, given how important sales are to the company.

Since Chief Product Officer Blake Irving is from Microsoft and he has brought in several execs from there to Yahoo, rumors are swirling around yet another one coming in.

Some outside partners are also nervous, including those staying at Microsoft.

In an interview just this morning with the new head of global ad sales for Microsoft (MSFT) Carolyn Everson, for example, she pointed out that Yahoo is slated to take over premium online ad sales for the software giant under the terms of their search and technology partnership in just two weeks.

“I’ll be honest,” she said. “We are a little worried.” But she added that Yahoo remains an important strategic partner and the success of the alliance is a key focus.

Worried? Get in line, it seems.

Twitter Puts "@EarlyBird" Down for a Long Nap

Peter Kafka — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 16:25:58 +0000

As Twitter continues to roll out new revenue products, it is also putting some away. Twitter is “setting aside” its “@earlybird” shopping promotional product, COO Dick Costolo said today at an Advertising Week event. Costolo left open the possibility that Twitter could revamp the product and bring it back, but I wouldn’t count on it–too much work to do on its primary products: Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends, which will be joined shortly by Promoted Accounts. Meanwhile, Costolo gave at least one hint of nonrevenue products the company is working on: It’s trying to figure out a better way to let people know about real-time Twitter coverage of events, he said.

Five Annoying Trends To Avoid During Advertising Week

Michael Lazerow — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 12:00:56 +0000

Press your suit. Shine your loafers. Charge your Twitter machines. Advertising Week is here.

The annual rite of passage for newly funded ad tech startups is a great opportunity to learn, network and get fired up for an exciting year ahead. Since its launch seven years ago, I have grown to love Advertising Week. It’s a week-long orgy of panels, speeches, parties and networking, networking, networking.

Regardless, there are a few annoying trends that have developed. Here’s your guide, from one industry executive to another, of what to avoid.

The “super excited” executive

Yes, we get it. You like your product. But your excitement isn’t contagious, it’s a bit scary! You’re not the first DSP. You’re not the “leading provider of” fill in the blank. The event isn’t about your product. Assume we don’t really care about your product.
Over-multi-tasking.
If you take the time to leave the office and learn new things and meet more people, keep your phone in your pocket and your computer in your bag. Speak to people. Introduce yourself. Put yourself out there and good things will happen. Avoid the temptation to sit idly as a new partner or client walks right in front of your drooped head, staring at the Twitter feed on your mobile device of choice.
Print is Dead
First, it’s not dead. The experience of reading a magazine is an enjoyable one and is not going away any time soon. Second, this has been the top du jour for a few years now. Move on. Choose a topic or two you’re interested in and try to go deep. One of this year’s most important topics will continue to be social media. A large Facebook contingency will be in town, including Facebook’s COO. Here are just a few of the social media related events: http://www.advertisingweek.com/events.php?searchStr=social
Overextending yourself
Pace yourself. Advertising Week is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. Don’t go too hard during the day as much of the action, activities and networking are at the evening parties. And there are a ton of them. I think of Advertising Week as just another week with a series of events I’ll seek out. Trying to do everything will be counterproductive. And if you have to choose, choose the evening or late-day events.
Over-syncing of your social profile
We all love social media, but some of it love it a bit TOO much. Don’t be that guy or gal that has 18 different apps synced up to your Twitter or Facebook feed, especially during a week when there’s so much going on. It’s just too much noise. You may love Advertising Week. Your followers, fans, friends and others may not.

Advertising Week has helped further solidify New York as the center of the media and marketing worlds. It’s the one week of the year that the west coasters actually flock in force to New York. Enjoy it. Cherish it. And avoid the mistakes that will ruin it for you and others.

Of course, if you’re interested in what I’m up to, I’ll be speaking at a few events. [Link: http://www.buddymedia.com/blog/buddy-media-at-advertising-week-new-york]

Nielsen Testing a New Web-Ad Metric

Suzanne Vranica — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 19:51:16 +0000

Nielsen Co. is working on a service that would offer advertisers and Web publishers a new stream of data to improve audience measurement for online advertising, a move that may bring more ad dollars to the sector.

As with TV ratings, the new service requires the participation of media outlets, in this case Web portals and other sites.
So far, the media-measurement firm has lined up Facebook Inc. as a participant, according to people familiar with the matter. Other websites are expected to join as it moves out of the testing phase.

Nielsen is expected to unveil the new product next week at Advertising Week, and will conduct a test of the service shortly, according to people familiar with the matter.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

You've Got Ads

Emily Steel — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 06:06:55 +0000

AOL Inc., struggling to turn around its fortunes, is preparing to introduce a larger, splashier ad format that it hopes will attract more ad dollars from big brands and help revitalize its business, according to people familiar with the matter.

The new ads, which the company plans to unveil during the Advertising Week conference later this month in New York, are roughly four times as large as the ads that typically appear on the border of AOL (AOL) Web pages.

They will include room for three special functions, such as a photo gallery, a video, coupons, updates from Facebook or Twitter, text messaging and maps, these people said.

The ads also can include a feature that allows consumers to zoom in and out of a 3-D view of a product and another that lets them click to buy the product.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Some More Positive Murmurs for Web Ads

Peter Kafka — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 12:01:13 +0000

More upbeat–but not too ecstatic–chatter about the state of the Internet advertising market this morning from Wall Street: Barclays Capital analyst Douglas Anmuth is raising his estimates for Google (GOOG), citing “improving macro conditions [and] a stronger ad market.”

Anmuth says his research shows an increase in pricing for Google’s search ads over the past few months, particularly in the battered retail and auto sectors. His note comes a couple days after Citigroup’s Mark Mahaney raised his Google estimates, citing a dramatic improvement from mid-August to mid-September.

Other Google bulls: Investors, who have been pushing up the company’s shares since March (they’re now hovering near the $500 mark again), and CEO Eric Schmidt, who declared this week that “it’s clear that the worst is behind us.”

The tempered enthusiasm isn’t limited to Google’s chances, by the way. Mahaney also had good things to say about Yahoo’s (YHOO) chances as the economy recovers. While Yahoo is handing over its search business to Microsoft (MSFT), Carol Bartz and crew still dominate the display ad business, and that should be picking up as well, he said.

It is worth noting that Yahoo executives themselves were more cautious this week when asked to describe market trends: At an Advertising Week press conference, Bartz brought out her “still bumping along the bottom” line, while EVP Hilary Schneider said ad sales had stabilized but that she “wouldn’t go so far as to say as we’re seeing a full recovery.”

More Modest Results for Microsoft's Marketing Blitz. Now It's Yahoo's Turn.

Peter Kafka — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:29:57 +0000

Another month, another half-point: Microsoft’s search market share crept up again in August, according to the newest numbers from comScore. Since Steve Ballmer and company launched Bing at the end of May with a $100 million marketing push, they’ve moved from eight percent to 9.3 percent.

Per usual, you can either argue that these modest gains are good news for Microsoft (MSFT), especially because they come after months of declines. Or you can argue that they are way too modest, given the hype and the media blitz that accompanied the launch.

My question: If you’re Carol Bartz and company and you’re about to launch a Bing-sized marketing campaign of your own, do Microsoft’s results give you encouragement or pause?

Again, the half-full argument is that the Bing blitz proves that given enough brute force, you can indeed use offline advertising to change online behavior, at least in the short term.

Half-empty: At least Microsoft’s pitch has an intriguing come-on–”Hey you! We’ve got a search engine that works better than Google (GOOG)! Come see for yourself!” But unless I’m missing something, there’s nothing equally compelling powering Yahoo’s “Its You!” push.

Maybe I’m wrong: Yahoo (YHOO) formally takes the drapes off its campaign this morning at a series of Advertising Week events. I’ll report back a little later today.

In the meantime, here are the newest comScore (SCOR) numbers, courtesy of JP Morgan’s Imran Khan (click on table to enlarge):

[Image credit: Seattle Municipal Archives]

AOL: More Org Chart Shuffles Coming; So Are Ad Dollars. But Mum on Microsoft.

Peter Kafka — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:15:01 +0000

It’s Advertising Week in New York! Which means that for the next few days, ad sellers will be meeting, greeting and buttering up ad buyers in hopes of prying some of their dollars free. Just like every week in New York.

One difference for the likes of me: Big ad sellers are making themselves very available to the press. This morning, for instance, AOL sent out CEO Tim Armstrong, sales boss Jeff Levick, sales deputy Erin Clift and content boss Bill Wilson to poke at eggs and ignore a plateful of bagels and lox.

Oh, and they talked, too! The big message was that they’re still in the process of overhauling the Internet giant on behalf of Time Warner (TWX), which brought in Armstrong from Google (GOOG) earlier this year and says it still plans on spinning off the company by the end of 2009.

Afterward, I got a brief interview (along with PaidContent’s David Armstrong) with the AOL chief. The video is at the bottom of the post, and you may need to turn up your speakers to hear it. But the takeaways are:

AOL is still looking for a chief marketing officer. The search is in the “early stages.” Do you know anyone? Internet experience is not a prerequisite.
More org chart moves, like the one that saw COO Kim Partoll pushed out last week, are coming. They’ll be part of the internal review process Armstrong has dubbed “Project Everest,” which should be complete by the end of the year.
So are layoffs. See above.
Internet ad dollars are beginning to flow out again–or if they’re not flowing, Armstrong thinks they will be, as big marketers like Procter & Gamble (PG) make permanent shifts in their advertising mixes.
Armstrong professes to be surprised by a report last week that he had met with Yusuf Mehdi, who runs Bing and MSN for Microsoft (MSFT). “I know Yusuf. I’ve known him personally for years. So if I saw him I would be happy, but…”

[ See post to watch video ]

Exclusive: Yahoo Set to Unveil Massive New Marketing Campaign at Advertising Week, Declaring Size Does Matter

Kara Swisher — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:32:49 +0000

Yahoo is set to unveil a major marketing campaign to reset advertiser and consumer perception of the long-troubled company during Advertising Week in New York, which starts a week from tomorrow.

According to numerous sources BoomTown has spoken to about the campaign, Yahoo (YHOO) is–at least with advertisers–going to focus on stressing the size and scale of the Internet giant.

The details of the plan will be made public Tuesday, Sept. 22, at a press conference.

It will take place immediately after a keynote speech–titled “Yahoo’s Consumer Revolution…Round II”–that the company’s new CMO, Elisa Steele, is set to deliver on the second day of the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX conference.

MIXX is a two-day event, run by IAB, focused specifically on online advertising.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz is also going to be attending Advertising Week–during which all the major players in the advertising business gather in Manhattan for a series of events–for a plethora of meetings with big Yahoo clients.

It is likely she and several other senior Yahoo execs will be at the press conference, sources said.

That press event will also include Penny Baldwin, a well-known industry exec Yahoo hired as its SVP of global integrated marketing and brand management in July.

The main message Bartz is set to deliver is that Yahoo is a powerhouse unlike any others on the Web when it comes to online display advertising.

And, in fact, Yahoo–despite all the internal and external turmoil it has undergone in recent years–remains one of the largest sites on the Internet, and is the top player in what is also called graphical advertising, as well as online media and communications.

“The whole push seems to be to remind people of vibrancy of the brand and exactly how huge its reach is,” said one person who has seen parts of the presentation. “It is less Yahoo is back than Yahoo has never left.”

Sources also noted that Yahoo is likely to stick to its plan to push the idea of “your home on the Web” to consumers, which I had previously posted about earlier this summer.

The idea of the Silicon Valley icon being the key hub destination for Internet users does dovetail with pushing its size to advertisers–major marketing messages that will also likely cost a pretty penny.

They will have to–Microsoft (MSFT) has been in the midst of a $100 million campaign for its new Bing search site and will likely spend more when it unveils updates to the service, dubbed Bing 2.0–within the next few weeks.

The company showed the changes it showed to its own employees last week, which was the subject of much tweeting on Twitter.

Yahoo will apparently give more specifics as to the spend for the marketing push at the press conference.

But, many sources said, the company is already out in the advertising market now, buying tens of millions of dollars in advertising online and offline to hawk Yahoo in print, on television and elsewhere.

(Full disclosure: Sources said that campaign will include The Wall Street Journal network, which includes this site.)

“It’s dramatic,” said one source about the marketing outlay.

Since she got to Yahoo, Bartz has continually stressed the need to promote Yahoo products and services more, including in an interview last week on CNBC (you can see that longish video here).

And, in the July earnings call for Yahoo, Bartz said: “In addition, we’re hard at work on plans to reposition our most valuable asset: Yahoo’s brand. Our Q3 plans include an initial wave of incremental marketing spend which will increase substantially into Q4 and next year.”

Also, in a Q&A in the same call, she added more about the long-term nature of the spending on branding:

“The branding and our whole campaign of advertising is just starting; however you have to understand that this is an ongoing campaign so it’s not transient at least for the next year or so. We’re really going to move to reposition the Yahoo brand and Yahoo Company, so right now, consider that as cost that’s in the system.”

What Bartz and other Yahoo execs will likely stress less is search, due to the search deal Yahoo struck in July with Microsoft in which the software giant will take over the back-end technology and Yahoo will sell search ads for both companies.

The company will compete with both Microsoft and Google (GOOG) in garnering the search market still, once the partnership is approved by regulators, with Yahoo focusing on differentiating itself via innovative user interface, design, features and functionality.

Rocky Seas for the Online Display Ad Market?

Kara Swisher — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 14:15:20 +0000

It is not so apt, if you think about it, that Yahoo has finally put up the details of its new system to let customers buy and sell display advertising–now called APT–right smack in the middle of the most serious financial meltdown of the modern era.

That’s because the economic crisis is likely to become a whirlpool that will be hard for any ad business to avoid, even the often recession-proof digital sector.

But it is Advertising Week in New York and, BoomTown supposes, the show must go on (it’s not as if they could suspend it, like a critically important Presidential debate or anything).

Actually, “ironic,” I suppose, is a better word than “apt,” because the existence of such a system–as a kind of Google-like way to deliver graphical advertising–is extremely vital to the next phase of the online ad game.

In Yahoo’s case, APT would service its sites, as well as big sites like eBay (EBAY) and several hundred newspaper sites, in what one can only hope is a cohesive manner rather than the patchwork way it is done now.

In order to reach many places across the country, for example, a national advertiser now has to potentially make hundreds of buys, which can be highly inefficient.

The other option is to use one of the too-many ad networks. But they often don’t let an advertiser know exactly where an ad is being placed, and it can sometimes create something called “channel conflict” between a publisher and an ad network.

This chaos has long been a problem in the online display business, which has been growing, although not with the same force or overall impact as the search ad business dominated by Google (GOOG).

Thus, the situation begs for clarity and for getting scale built into the system, which can only be imposed by big players like Yahoo (YHOO)–or Google or Microsoft (MSFT), both of which are working on their own systems.

Unfortunately, while the search ad market has a better chance to weather the current economic crisis, the online display market is a horse of a different color.

Many speakers at Ad Week underscored the obvious.

Former Yahoo ad head Wenda Millard, now co-CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, said in a panel that the Wall Street crisis will have “pretty severe implications for medium-sized and smaller businesses and consumers.”

It was an opinion expressed by many others in the online space who attended the event, most of whom also tried to note in some fashion that the digital sector has a better chance to weather the expected slowdown than other media like magazines.

That might be so. But as one top digital exec correctly noted to me after the events of this week, which have deeply impacted banks and Wall Street firms, it will be hard to escape the suction-like pull of sinking ships:

“Like it or not, we’re all financial stocks now.”