@bmorrissey

Will people pay for mobile content?

It seems like we're at the start of a great experiment to find what types of digital content people will pay for. The Web has been in love with The Cult of Free to the point where it's threatening the producers of content with extinction. There simply isn't enough advertising money to support everything. So what's next? The trick for content providers is to create tiers of content with value enough to get people to pay up. It's going to be tough. Mobile appears to be the first front. The Wall Street Journal this week flipped the switch on charging for much of the content available via its iPhone and Blackberry apps. Check out the reaction from those using the app -- 1000 of its 1500 ratings are one star with most are vowing to never use it again. (http://www.wsj.com/iphoneinstall)The newest test: Someecards. It rolled out an iPhone app today that costs a modest 99 cents. It's less than the cost of a Coke. It'll still be interesting to see if people take to these kind of microtransactions for content as a behavior. It would be unheard of to ask for 99 cents to use Someecards.com. But it might just work in mobile. There's quite a bit on the line. As Fred Wilson recently pointed out, "We need a scalable business model for mobile web apps. Display advertising is not likely to be that answer."

Is CNN listening?

CNN launched its redesigned site this week after holding a fancy party last week to celebrate it. Any change can be bumpy. As much as people say they like change, they really don't when push comes to shove. Still, the real-time feedback loop is speaking pretty directly to discomfort with the changes. There's more over at a CNN blog post, but the conversation is distributed nowadays and very public. It'll be interesting to see: 1. if this builds, and 2. if CNN has to address it.

The lengths people go to make friends

If you live in NYC, you've been punished by an unrelenting barrage of advertising from incumbant gazillionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg. I think one in three direct mail pieces I get is from him. His commercials and billboards are everywhere. According to the Times, he's outspent his largely anonymous opponent, former city comptroller William Thompson, by 14:1.

Ah, but money can't buy friendship. That won't stop politicians from trying, at least judging by ads Bloomberg is running to scrounge up followers on Facebook and Twitter. Is it working? Maybe. Bloomberg has I2,000 followers on Twitter, not exactly a huge following for a nationally known politician, and 24,000 supporters on Facebook. Still, I agree with RedState: we'll see more politicians focus ads on building up their social network followers for the same reason brands are doing this. It's a great way to find a base of advocates.

Letting customers tell the brand story

What's becoming clear is the brands that will succeed in social media -- and all media will become social -- are those that can get customers to tell great stories about them. Sometimes, that simple idea gets twisted by some specialists into the very different proposition that "advertising is dead." It's not, it's just changing. With Windows 7, Microsoft finally, after screwing up with Vista and XP, appears to have a good operating system shipping. Its campaign is around customers telling the story. That will be told through regular TV and other forms of old-school advertising, of course, but people will even be skeptical of that. Just see how the tech blogs labored to discredit "Lauren" in the "I"m a PC" ads as an actress. Social media offers the opportunity to somewhat counter that by surfacing real people's feedback. That's why I was intrigued by the campaign on Facebook today. Microsoft is running engagement ads with a seven-second video of customers raving about Windows 7. It also invites people to fan Windows. Clicking on the ad brings people face to face with what other people are saying. It's a small thing but I think part of this two-way advertising revolution: brands using advertising to show what others are saying about their products rather than what them brand is saying about them. You can imagine Facebook will end up adding an option to bring people what to what people what those in their network are saying about a brand's products. The Windows 7 page also pulls in feeds from around the Web.

The two-way advertising revolution

"I think when the Internet came out, everyone thought it was going to change marketing…and really what happened is a lot of the things that were going on before moved online. So you used to do a TV ad, you did a banner ad—but it was still that one-way communication of one to many. Our ads are really two-way and really social. That's, I think, the real difference."

-- Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, speaking to BusinessWeek.

It's early to claim Facebook has revolutionized advertising, as BusinessWeek paraphrases Sandberg as saying. It echoes the boast Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg made when the company first introduced its ad platform. Still, Facebook has taken a giant step toward making advertising more participatory. I took a look at the success (and misses) brands are having with their Facebook pages. What quickly became clear is Facebook really can drive engagement. One example not in the article: Walgreen's put up an official Facebook page in September. It got 25,000 fans. Then it ran a weeklong Facebook ad campaign and saw its fan base grow to 200,000. The drug store chain now has a surprising 347,000 fans on Facebook. The challenge, an executive told me, is what to do now with this fan base, but the experience, he said, "opened a lot of eyes in the company." A quite different brand, Chick-fil-A, had 25,000 people register for a chicken sandwich sample in five days.

The key to these examples: there is measurable engagement. The only way brands are going to shift budgets out of the tried and true to two-way advertising is if it can proven to work. The idea that the eyeballs are there and therefore the money will shift isn't going to cut it.

The truth is the two-way revolution will move slowly. It will move, though. Ad providers that can show measurable engagement with customers -- not just clicks or impressions -- will win out in a world of two-way communication. That's why I pay a lot of attention to what people like Digg, Federated Media and Video Egg are doing.

Advertising in the stream (con't)

Gawker always impresses me with its advertising. It treats its readers like adults. Yeah, some of the ads are big, and Gawker sites always make you click through to get the full story -- and generate more page views. But Gawker shows a good understanding of adapting advertising to fit the environment, to make ads appear smack dab in the stream. I came across this "sponsored post" campaign from Wendy's. The tone and headline are perfect for Deadspin. Clicking through brings readers to a Wendy's area with some videos and the normal branding. Many will object that the content only gets a small advertising label and appears in the same font as editorial and without a blinking "don't look at this" box. I can empathize, yet I'm also pretty sure advertisers are going to demand to opportunities to get off the periphery.

The ad page:

Twitter as communal watercooler

This is over a two-hour period, via @pblackshaw.

The upside of controversy (con't)

At least people are talking about you...

 

Via @wloglobal. Stats at Mobclix.com.

Over at iTunes, Amp Up Before You Score is the No. 4 free app in Entertainment and NO. 41 free app overall.

Is Pepsi to blame for the Amp App?

Twitter has been alive with outrage over the Amp Up Before You Score iPhone app, released by Pepsi energy drink brand Amp Energy, which is actually part of PepsiCo's Mountain Dew portfolio. I’ll leave the debate over whether this app is offensive to others. What’s interesting is whether Pepsi is to blame.

PepsiCo is a very large company that owns many, many brands, including the iconic Pepsi brand. Amp Energy is just one of many in its portfolio. It also happens to be a brand that relies heavily on young males. Its advertising has been dominated by NASCAR sponsorship. When I wrote about the Amp Up app on Friday, I spoke with R/GA about the app as part of an effort to reach this young male audience. Let’s face it, Axe and even Burger King have shown that it’s not sophistication that tends to get through.

Now, if this is another energy drink brand, say Rockstar Energy, does this “controversy” happen? I’m guessing no. Admittedly, I chose a headline that stressed Amp being a Pepsi brand because I thought it was noteworthy a large CPG like Pepsi took a risqué approach. At the same time, I doubt I’d write the same about Unilever when it comes to Axe because it has pretty much no brand identity. It’s like a holding company. No matter what you think of the Amp Up app, you can’t deny that a pretty persuasive case of hypocrisy can be leveled versus Unilever for simultaneously running mud-wrestling Axe ads and Dove Real Beauty spots. Pepsi doesn’t have that luxury, I guess, of separating out its brands that way. For what it's worth, Pepsi told me it has no plans to pull the app, despite the chorus of outrage.