Content Is Still King

Advertising In Today’s Times

Well, how was everybody’s weekend???  I once again had the most awesome and incredible weekend with my lovely and beautiful girlfriend.  On Friday, we saw the movie called “The Social Network.” 

Basically, it is the movie about Facebook, and how it was launched and created, as well as the many lawsuits that went along with it.  We really enjoyed the movie, but it was rather long, I think something like almost two and half hours in length (after sitting all day at work, I do get a little any sitting even more). 

Despite its length, it was a very informative movie.  Although I use Facebook every day to post links to my daily Postings, I never really understood or even pondered about the history of Facebook.  Since it has become such an integral part of our daily society and communications needs, it is completely taken for granted. 

Or at least, until the power goes out, or we lose Internet access, or if even the Facebook servers crash (which has happened to me on a number of times-it can get just a little bit frustrating).  But anyways, it was truly remarkable to see the background behind Facebook, and all of the people and the efforts which went behind it.  Although many of the participants in the Facebook venture were I am sure pretty arrogant and cocky, especially being Harvard students, I was truly marveled at the intellectual background of these people. 

It really felt great to see some techie jargon thrown about in this movie, such as “Apache”, “PHP”, and the various HTML code syntax structures in there.  Heck, even I had a fun time explaining to Anita all of these wonderful lines of code (and I am not even a programmer myself).  Another  thing which caught my attention about this movie, as I am sure it did everybody else, were the claims of intellectual property. 

Although I am far away from being an intellectual property attorney, it was just amazing to see what defined intellectual property in this movie, and who owned what.  I guess this discussion now even thrusts on the realm of the definition of what intellectual property is all about.  But, this is beyond the scope of this blog site, I will leave that to all of the intellectual property attorneys to figure that one out. 

I guess this also brings home the point of the importance of trademarks and copyrights, and especially in my line of work, where everything is content driven, it is of prime importance to protect your work.  Overall, I would recommend this movie . . . although it is quite long, you do get a very good insight into how Facebook was created and launched (not just so much from the technical perspective, but from the people perspective as well). 

The next day, Anita and I decided to have a nice, romantic dinner at a restaurant to where I never have been too before, known as “Bahama Breeze”.  It is located in the Schaumburg area, and when she first told me the name of the restaurant, I figured it had to do something with the tropics and warm weather, which was fine by me.  And when we first entered, I was totally blown away by the whole theme of the restaurant. 

The entire insides of the restaurant was elaborated in this warm weather, tropical climate kind of thing.  It was truly refreshing, seeing how cold it is getting outside, the holiday season coming up.  They even had warm water fountains at this place, and if I recall correctly, even some palm trees perhaps???  They even had little fans on the top of the ceiling to remind you of good times to come and the next wonderful, hot summer of 2011 (which by how fast time is going by, it will be much quicker than we realize-I can’t wait). 

Anita ordered her usual chicken dish, I got my usual vegetarian sandwhich dish, preceded by a spinach dip appetizer which was just incredible.  The customer service was great, and believe me, Anita and I will be returning there in the near future.  So apart from seeing how Facebook was launched and all of the lawsuits which went with that, and having a wonderful dinner the next day, there was a common theme in which I picked up on pretty quickly. 

Here is a hint, these two things are just wrote about have are business entities, and what is one theme which is central to business???  Yep, you got it, it is advertising.  It was mentioned many times in the movie about Facebook, especially when the people involved realized that they needed to have some sort of revenue model to pay for all of the free services which were being offered. 

And at the restaurant, believe me, there was plenty of advertising involved, ranging from the great customer service to the little coupon books customers can get on their way out.  Advertising is a very inexact science and methodology.  Business owners, marketing professionals, etc.  have always thought and dreamed that the way they conduct their advertising will always work. 

But ninety nine percent of the time, they are often blindsided because it failed.  Why is this so???  Well, it is just like a relationship.  In advertising, we are trying to turn on people’s emotions so that they will be induced into buying our products and services.  And whenever you are dealing with another person’s emotions or feelings, the lack of quantification and the sheer amount of uncertainty will be there, it does not matter what part of like we are talking about, this is just the bottom line. 

This is probably the one part in the marketing world which small business owners and advertisers across all spectrums of industry would love to understand.  And that is, how do you measure the rate of return you are getting from your advertising efforts, and from that, how many leads can one generate, and then convert into sales???  But out of these three things, it is probably the first one which is driving advertisers nuts. 

And rightfully so.  I mean after all, many of the bib name corporations and businesses are plunking in big amounts of dollars, so it is their fundamental right to know what kind of return they are getting at.  Many theories and doctoral dissertations have been written about this subject, as well as many types and kind of statistical models.  But, yet, each and every still fails in trying to quantify that very exact rate of return. 

But hey, there may be a new method on the way.  And can you guess what it is all about???  Yep, once again, it is Biometrics.  Pretty much all of my Postings have dealt with Biometrics from a Security standpoint, as well as the issues standpoint.  I mean after all, that is what Biometrics is all about right??? 

Well, maybe not so much here in the near future.  Biometrics now has the great potential in trying to help advertisers and other marketing professionals in determining and quantifying how customers react to particular types and kinds of advertising, and in turn, trying to quantify that exact rate of return upon the million of which are spent on advertising. 

Today, I came across a Press Release which describes this just very thing.  In it, was mentioned that online publishing agency known as “The Online Publishers Association” or “OPA” for short, just released a scientific white paper known as “Biometric Evaluation: Assessing the Effectiveness of the OPA Ad Unit”. 

In it, describes how Biometrics was used to capture the reactions of  customers as they saw various types and kinds of advertising. 

Here are the details into this:  “OPA and Innerscope Research, Inc., founded by Harvard and MIT scientists, is a leader in using biometrics to deliver emotion-based consumer insights, partnered to study the impact and advertising effectiveness of the OPA Ad Units. Since traditional research methods are limited in their ability to measure how the end user specifically engages with advertising, Innerscope's technology allowed the OPA to better understand the impact of the OPA Ad Units, which are designed to provide a platform for marketers to deliver their brand experiences as opposed to encouraging consumers to click. OPA Ad Units, which include(2) the Pushdown, the Fixed Panel and the XXL Box, were introduced in July of 2009 . . . Additional results from "Biometric Evaluation: Assessing the Effectiveness of the OPA Ad Unit" include:

*96 percent of participants pay attention to OPA Ad Units while naturally surfing
*73 percent of users who fixated on units in the first 10 seconds displayed a stronger emotional response to the advertising than to the rest of the webpage
* On average it takes 0.6 seconds to fixate on an OPA Ad Unit
* On average, participants fixate over 15 times on OPA Ad Units
* 40 percent of these fixations occur after the first 10 seconds of being on a webpage

Study participants were directed to the homepages of three OPA member sites — CNN.com, MSNBC.com and NYTimes.com — and given the option to select from a specific group of top stories that featured evergreen content. These homepages and particular article pages were recreated for the purposes of this study so that an OPA Ad Unit could be randomly presented on the targeted article pages. Nine brand advertisers were involved in the study, including Cleveland Clinic, Cadillac, Mercedes-Benz, Microsoft Bing, Unilever and Westin Hotels. Once a participant surfed away from a target article by clicking a link to another article, they could freely browse the rest of the news websites, creating a natural reading experience.”  (SOURCE:  http://www.findbiometrics.com/articles/i/8399/).

Final Thoughts On Today’s Posting

Based from the above huge quote, it appears primarily that this study was used primarily for the world of online advertising. 

Although the exact type of Biometric Technology being employed in this project is not mentioned, I am assuming by a safe degree that some sort of Behavioral based Biometric Technology was used, and possibly even Iris Recognition, as the movements of the participants eyes were captured also as they saw the various kinds and types of advertisements. 

For example, “A key question for advertisers is whether consumers notice their ad and if they engage with it . . . We can actually see a participants' eye tracking activity as they view the ad, read the content, and then return to the ad.”  (SOURCE:  http://www.findbiometrics.com/articles/i/8399/). 

Apparently, the customers were directed to three different websites (which are specifically named up above), and from there, nine advertises put up their respective advertisements and content (again, these can be seen up above in the quote). 

Based on what was mentioned, I am assuming also that the customers had to click on various types and kinds of articles of interest, and after they did that, they were then free to move about and click to whatever content they then wanted to see on those three websites. 

The results of the study are astounding. 

For example, almost one hundred percent of the customers actually paid attention to the articles and advertisements while they were at that particular website; over seventy percent of the customers were “fixated” on the content within the first ten seconds after seeing it (they also displayed a much stronger emotional response, supposedly, and this also drives home the point we are all taught so many times in life that first impression do really matter); it takes just six tenths of a second to become fixated with the content on the advertisement or the article; and also, the customers fixated on average, fifteen times over the same content (whether in the article or in the advertisement) within the same time frame. 

Overall, this study showed that almost seventy percent of the customers returned to the same content in the advertisement or the article after spending time reading other different types and kinds of content elsewhere. 

OK, so you may be wondering now what are my thoughts and views on all of this??? 

Well, first, after the seeing that movie Friday night, it dawned on me, that the days of traditional print and advertising, whether it is in the newspaper, the yellow pages, or magazines is now obsolete and a thing of the past. 

Given the boom in Social Media, and how even further connected the world is now online, this will be the place to go now for advertising and trying to woo customers. 

Forget even the traditional trade show or even putting up a product/service booth for your company.  It just won’t work anymore. 

And if you are still stuck in the old world of doing advertising, you could actually even turn off potential customers and clients, because they think you are too archaic and naïve to be in the online world. 

It just all comes down to an issue of image. 

Second, as we move into the world of Social Media for our advertising needs, we will see even further plethora of tools and sites we can use. 

Thus, comes the importance of figuring out what to use, and how to use it.  Whenever people ask me what to use, I just tell use the traditional and much more well known tools like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube, Linked In, etc. 

These are free, and you can reach a wide ranging audience with them. 

Third, as we enter into this online world of advertising, the need to quantify all of this stuff is going to be just that much greater.  

But, the good news with all of this online stuff, is that you can now get a much better feel for what works and what does not work, in terms of content. 

For instance, with Paid Per Click Advertisements, customers click on your ad if they see it in an organic search listing, such as Google, or Yahoo. 

With this method, you can get a very simplisitic baseline feel if the content you have written works or does not work in just a matter of a short time.  But as I just said, this is looking and analyzing things from a very simple level. 

Advertising and content driven campaigns can get very complicated very quickly, thus there will be a need for much more powerful analysis tools, like Biometrics, in the application as described in this Posting. 

I can’t forecast exactly how the exact Biometrics tools will look like, but it will be an integral part.  Why do I say this??? 

Well, advertisers want immediate feedback and analysis into how customers react to different types and kinds of content. 

What better tool to use than Biometrics??? 

After all with this, you will be getting immediate physiological and behavioral feedback, as the old saying goes, “straight from the horse’s mouth”. 

Fourth, as advertising and content driven marketing campaigns further proliferate into the world of Social Media, there will be a need to keep abreast of the new analytical tools which help you to analyze the metrics of your information and data which you have captured to measure your customer’s reactions to your content and advertisements. 

Google Analytics is such a tool I am talking about. 

So forget about those stupid marketing theories and principles you learned about as an undergrad or in your MBA program. 

They just won’t work anymore. 

I bet you might be worrying about now how you will be able to use all of these complex tools.  Once again, do not fret. 

Many of these software applications will be available as a hosted, Software as a Service (SaaS) application, with all of  the tools you will need incorporated right into them. 

This is another great area in which the Biometrics Vendors can expand into:  Developing Biometrics solutions and applications for the advertisers so they can get measure that rate of return quickly. 

And as especially as a hosted offering, of which Biometrics is slowly starting to enter into now. 

Fifth and finally, remember this old cardinal rule. 

Content is still king. 

Despite all of the fancy tools out there and all of the Social Media stuff, customers in the end still want to see content written in every day, plain English, but most importantly, they want to see how that content will benefit them, for their particular needs and wants, and in their daily lives as well.